


riding in cars with boys

by darkbluetennessee



Category: Girl Meets World
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2017-08-24
Packaged: 2018-05-20 05:24:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 30,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5993092
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkbluetennessee/pseuds/darkbluetennessee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's 1994. Maya's world is off its axis.</p><p>(Or, if Maya had come of age when Cory did. Lucas is still the new kid, but he’s not so new to her. Nineties AU.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. one

**Author's Note:**

> I thought it would be interesting to explore Maya's coming of age as it would have been over twenty years ago — when Cory was a teenager.
> 
> Any kudos, comments, and guesses as to what my trajectory is are welcome! I just want to see if there's interest before I consider continuing this.

_You do your thing and I do my thing. You are you and I am I. And, if, in the end, we end up together, it's beautiful._

 

▼

 

It’s 1994.

 

“Riley, it’s 1994.” 

 

New York City is currently afflicted by the disease the rest of the known universe would simply refer to as celebration; Maya is simply hoping, maybe even _praying_ if she gets desperate enough, that Riley will unglue herself from the television soon.

The fireworks don’t interest Maya much. Or at all, really. Even the shouts across Bleeker, which the Matthews apartment faces, are irritating her with increasing speed.

 

( Usually, she’d be entertained — she always is when Bleeker gets rowdy, says that the Alphabet City noise she’s used to has come to visit for a short time. )

 

Riley loves watching the ball drop, loves the controlled chaos that follows it. Always has. Maya knows this, and she won’t drag her away in an effort to save herself from the dull pounding now coming from her temples.

Besides, it’s best to stay still. If she moves any closer to Riley, she’ll trip that unlucky imbalance of equilibrium that’ll trigger the now frequent bouts of projectile vomiting she’s come to know. No thanks.

Riley also loves New Year’s Eve. Maya so wish she could say the same. She never has, and swears she never will. The Matthews insist that no fifteen year old is capable of torpedoing through the looking glass and deciding, definitively, what they will and won’t want in the future. Even five, ten years out.

 

( Maya insists she never wants kids and they laugh, mercilessly. She grumbles every time the topic comes up at breakfast, but only aggressively pokes at her eggs and doesn’t protest. )

 

But Riley, Riley — she’s the one who matters right now, in this very moment. She is still watching the television with a wide-eyed sort of clarity. The mayor announced that this was the return of a New York City he’d been familiar with when he was young. Everyone was insisting that the city was much prettier than it had been in decades.

“1994 might be the start of something incredible,” Riley muses excitedly, finally turning away from the screen and towards Maya, who doesn’t have enough time to change her irritated-slash-indifferent expression. “What’s wrong?”

Maya’s gaze quickly shifts from Riley’s, down to her scuffed lace-up boots. “Oh, nothing. You know I don’t really do the whole holiday thing.”

Riles seems slightly perplexed, scooting closer to her best friend and abandoning her fascination with the streamers that have aggressively colored Times Square.

“But you actually _said_ it was 1994 and it had me thinking — what if all of these people are right? What if this changes _everything_?” She takes tight hold of Maya’s forearm, attempting to shake her into an enlightened state. “C’mon, my parents might actually let us go out together. On the subway! Open mics at Nuyorican, Broadway shows…”

Maya is already gone elsewhere, her mind traveling into some sort of dimension where she doesn’t have to consider the passage of time. Had she actually announced the arrival of the new year? She doesn’t remember now. Everything is blurry, uncertain, indecipherable.

 

Nothing makes sense.

 

“Maya!” 

She jumps, startled by the sudden sound of her name.

“Are you even listening to me?” It’s the type of question that would come out in a semi-biting tone off of anyone else’s tongue, but this is Riley, and she’s being gentle. Her brows are knitted together in deep concern. Sure, Maya can be a space cadet, but she tries her best to listen to Riley’s musings past the ten seconds she allowed this time around. 

“Seriously, what’s wrong? You’re somewhere else tonight. I thought you’d be happy, after all this time you’ve been begging my parents to let me see the city.”

Riley is fifteen, but a staunch sort of fifteen, still adorable in the face and yet altogether demanding when she needs to be. She is a collection of the traits that Maya has always believed makes one complete person — even before they met each other when they were five.

Maya is sixteen. Newly sixteen. Uncertain. About so many things. So, when she looks Riley in the eye again, she’s not sure what to say.

Because Riley is worried and Riley has most of the answers the universe contains, but Riley does not have the answers that Riley’s best friend Maya so desperately needs right now.

“We’re gonna see the whole world, you and me.” It’s a response that comes late out of the gate, but it comes, and Maya wants to sound as sincere as humanly possible when she says it. She thinks she’s succeeded, because when she reaches over to grab Riley’s hand, her best friend grabs onto it tightly and squeezes it for good measure.

She wants to believe in the statement as much as Riley does, which is why she doesn’t say when or how they’ll see it.

Because Maya does not live on Bleeker Street and Maya knows her life is halfway headed where nearly everyone said it would, but Maya’s best friend Riley does not know that yet.

 

▼

 

For the first time in over a decade, she misses breakfast at the Matthews apartment. She thinks, maybe, that they have no choice but to assume something is really wrong with her. That she might be dead in an alleyway, or something.

 

( Riley’s parents seem to love Maya with everything they’ve got, but they’ve never considered Alphabet City the most palatable. Riley never visits. It’s something Maya has accepted, because she has no other choice. )

 

When the phone rings, it’s Riley’s father, and her assumption is proven correct.

“This is really unlike you, Maya.”

She really hasn’t ever missed breakfast. Sure, she cuts class, but she’s always there at Riley’s dining table, keeping her parents under the guise that she’ll sit in a desk all day and be the student that Riley is.

It doesn’t really work as well as it once did. Her truancy slips are of particular interest to the principal now, who knows that Maya shouldn’t even be attending Adams; it’s not the high school in her district, and Mr. Matthews has done a great deal of maneuvering to get her a seat in a place she doesn’t belong.

She feels awful for wasting his time more often than not, but she thinks maybe, just maybe, he’ll stop being so adamant about her attending if she can’t even bother to show up for her ride to school with Riley.

“I’ll get there on time, I promise. I just got a late start.”

She’s sick. She’s never let that stop her from sitting down for breakfast with the Matthews until now.

 

Some afflictions, she now realizes, are easier to show off than others.

 

But when she makes her promise, she means it. Bleary-eyed and anything but bushy-tailed, she captures her hair into a messy ponytail and swipes the subway tokens her mother’s left sitting out on the counter.

They’re not for her, she knows, but it doesn’t matter much. 

She’ll replace them later, she notes to herself, as she rushes out of the door.

 

▼

 

Homeroom is alive with the energy of students who are equally thrilled and horrified to have returned to school. 

Mr. Matthews threatens ( though not at all in a threatening voice ) that their PSAT scores are in, and so Maya has been given some time to avoid discussing her noticeable absence. Riley is too busy freaking out over her future, and Maya can mercifully zone out during her panic; she never needs advice or an explanation during an academic crisis, only a presumed listening ear.

As Riley reviews the math section with herself, Maya counts. Just counts. Days until the semester is over. Days until her presumed graduation. Hours until _finally_ , the dam in her will break and she will tell Riley and the Matthews that —

 

“Is this sophomore homeroom eight?”

 

A different dam in her breaks then, because it just can’t be.

But it is. She knows the voice, the one she's reviewed in her head, over and over.

 

_You’re an artist._

_I’d like to be._

_So you must see the world differently._

_Different how?_

_You can see what makes it turn._

 

She turns her head towards the back of her room, and there he is, in a relaxed stance, backpack only hiked onto one of his shoulders, a curious expression in his eyes as he reviews the unfamiliar faces that are now transfixed on him. New students are a time a dozen, sure, but he has a magnetizing quality.

It takes his gaze some time to travel to the front of the room where Maya sits, but when it does, her chest tightens with a pain beyond belief and she realizes she can only look at him for just a second.

But even when she looks away, she can still see him in her periphery, trying to peel the layers back and see her insides so he can assure she is who he thinks she is.

Her first instinct is to turn to Riley and share her terror, but when she does, she remembers that he’s just as new to her as he is to everyone else.

She’s on air now, Maya knows — she can see it. Her eyes are lit up with a sense of fascination. Riley can only do crushes the way Riley does them, and they are full throttle.

 

“Lucas has recently moved here from Texas.”

 

And Maya hopes, maybe even _prays_ , that he’ll get himself back there.


	2. two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long time no see! I'm still here, I promise. I was thrilled by the response to the first chapter, and I hope you enjoy this one.
> 
> Feel free to follow me on Tumblr @mxyaharts. You're allowed to pester me about updates if you do. c:
> 
> And leave comments! Those are gr8. Love them.

She has biology after homeroom. The classroom is on the other side of the school. She has to dash as is, if she even has intent to attend for once. This is what she reminds herself of as she panics at the sight of him.

 

( She won’t have to speak to him. It’s fine. _It’s fine._ )

  

But Riley is speaking _about_ him with increasing speed, thoroughly curious about his presence and determined to understand him from the inside out. 

“Why would someone move to New York from Texas in the middle of the year? He must have an interesting reason, right?”

She is asking all of these questions that don’t have answers, and though he has taken the only empty seat at the very back of the room, Riley isn’t necessarily equipped to speak in hushed tones.

Maya’s cheeks are enflamed; she’s only concerned about whether he can hear, because she doesn’t want him to believe that she’s as fascinated with him as Riley is. That would open a new can of worms, and she has plenty to deal with already.

“Why don’t you just ask him all of these things yourself?” Maya finally cuts through all the noise, her voice having a slightly bigger edge to it than she intended. As a result, Riley’s face falls and she is meek once more, apologetic for having irritated her. 

Maya gives her a short smile as her own form of apology, knowing that it’s best to not get so coarse with her. “I bet he’s nice. Southern gentleman and all that. He’ll be down for show and tell.”

Just like that, the tense moment is forgotten. Riley has already moved onto mortification, her skin draining of its hue. “I’m no good at talking to guys! I stumble over my words and become this huge mess —“ Her words cut off abruptly. 

“Oh God. I think he’s looking at me.” Her eyes are quickly darting between the place Maya presumes Lucas is sitting and Maya herself. “What do I do?” Her panic is at an all-time high, but still she smiles, awkwardly placing a hand behind her head — and then, realizing how strange that is, she begins to scratch her scalp to counteract it.

“Be cool,” Maya responds definitively, but it’s more for her than for Riley, a short command that she is willing herself to hear. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

 

A lie? _Probably._

“C’mon, you _have_ to help me,” Riley insists, spinning Maya around to face Lucas.

 

( Maya knows immediately that Lucas wasn’t looking at Riley. But she could have known that without turning around. It’s confronting it that makes her insides turn, so much so that she is almost convinced that she’s going to vomit right then and there. )

 

He smiles at her. She balks. The bell rings.

“That smile could give us world peace,” Riley says, and what’s most frightening is that Maya can’t tell if she’s right or wrong.

 

▼

 

“Maya.”

 

( _You have to run,_ she pleads with herself. _Run. Run. Run._ )

  

But she stops. She stops and she hates herself. She stops and she doesn’t.

She doesn’t have to turn to face him because he takes matters into his own hands, twisting his way through hallway traffic to get himself in front of her. By then, there’s no running.

 

She remembers how tall and looming she found him at that exact moment, how intimidating his presence could be though she deduced almost instantly that there were few kinder souls on the planet. For Maya, there was Lucas, and there was — 

 

“Do you two know each other?” Riley’s long hair brushes against Maya’s bare shoulder, and now Maya is registering how freezing it is, how brutal and _unforgiving_ winter can be.

Lucas, ever the southern gentleman — and just gentleman _in general_ — Maya already knows him to be, remains silent and waits for his cue. He’ll go along with whatever she says; she knows that for sure. So she improvises.

“We met each other in the city,” Maya begins with a vague piece of truth, giving Riley her full attention as she purposefully shakes her hair in front of her periphery. “During that huge blizzard. Do you remember?”

It’s about as indeterminate a statement as she could manage, considering blizzards are a dime of dozen this winter — snow piled up like all of Maya’s mistakes. But still, Riley nods enthusiastically and waits for her to finish.

“Nearly got blown away by the wind and he ran over and kept me standing, with his brick wall of a body.” She continues, blindly reaching out to brush her hand against his torso — _big mistake_ , she deduces, and she removes it as quickly as it came. “We thought we should introduce ourselves to each other. Seemed right after some life-saving.”

She flips her hair back and eyes dart to Lucas again, though her body is still oriented towards Riley. Once he gets that recognition, he nods, flashing that smile again.

“Just a chance meeting,” he adds, a twinkle in his eyes. He doesn’t relinquish his focus on Maya, not for a second. “Crazy that we’re both here, huh?”

Maya nods, because that’s what a normal person would do — banter without concern, joke about coincidence. “Yeah.” Her voice is considerably lower now, as if her vocal cords are strained. “Crazy.”

She doesn’t know how long they hold each other’s gaze, but regardless, Riley breaks the spell, gently tugging on Maya’s arm. Maya’s attention is on Riley once more — where it should be.

“I’ll see you in history, right?” Riley is asking this like a parent trying to assure that their child is going to behave. She is convinced more often than not that Maya is going to cut, regardless of how many warnings she’s been given.

 

( “Is it because you don’t think you deserve to be there?” Riley asked one day, in the middle of a bout of silence after Maya definitively refused to do her homework — all of her textbooks piled atop the bench in front of the bay window, useless to her.

Maya hadn’t ever considered it, not really. But it was true — she didn’t. Those Alphabet City digs she knew like the back of her hand were where she was meant to stay if the rest of the world had something to say about it.

 _Self-sabotage_ : if not her favorite skill, it is her best one. )

 

“Right, yeah,” Maya says, taking Riley’s hand as an extra bit of reassurance. “I’ll be there with bells on.”

Riley is looking at her warily, which Maya expects — but it’s for reasons other than knowing that Maya often lies to provide her comfort. “I’ll let you two catch up, then.”

She smiles at Lucas, shy as ever, and disappears into the crowd.

 _Shit._ Maya will have to explain herself now, give more pieces to this story — because Lucas is looking at her the way he does, and Riley, while optimistic, isn’t stupid.

Maya is quick to decipher when a boy is interested in her, because boys are never gentle with her; they are loud and boisterous, quick to mark their territory and quick to leave once all is said and done. _This is the nineties_ , Maya always reminds Riley. _No one’s subtle anymore._

 

( She doesn’t reside in a fifties sitcom, where people respect one another and _court_.

Picket fences have been replaced by tent cities, Mustangs are graffiti-covered subway cars, and Maya is worn and at sixteen feels so very _old_. )

 

She just looks like the kind of girl who is harsh and enjoys storms. Riley isn’t inclined to believe her tenets on romance because boys are still kind to her, and the ones who trail on her path are of her suit: proper and refined, respectful and demure. 

 

Boys like Lucas.

 

Lucas is looking at her with goodness in his heart and compassion in his veins, and Riley knows that language well. Maya can’t muddle it.

She only has him to look at now, blood wildly pounding in her ears. 

“We’re attached at the hip,” she says slowly, tentatively, her hands now fidgeting within one another. She wrings them out, swings them back and forth, anything to contain the frenetic energy within her. “But her parents are protective, so —“ 

She has no reason to stop because Lucas is only listening intently, refusing to falter. And yet, that makes her more nervous than anything.

“She’s just not into the party scene, so I don’t talk about it with her.”

The hall is emptying, she sees. The bell will be ringing soon.

“Okay,” Lucas replies. “I won’t mention it.”

 _To her? Or at all?_ Maya’s head is buzzing. 

It’s silent for a few more seconds, so he interjects again. “There’s something tonight on Avenue D —“

“Yeah, I know.” _Fuck_. New to the city and he still has it figured out, everything deciphered and the right — or _wrong_ — people in his tree of friends. Or acquaintances. That’s what Maya calls her nighttime buddies, the ones who can blow perfect smoke rings and leave disaster in their wake.

He tests the waters, steps forward just once, and reaches out a hand. Her hands are separated from one another, and she doesn’t fight it. His thumb is gently caressing skin now, tracing over visible veins of hers.

 

She wants to disintegrate.

 

“Will you come?”

 

 _I think you’re imagining a lot of me._

_Imagining?_

_Imagining that I’m simpler than I am. Filling in the blanks._

_Everyone’s complicated._

_I don’t think you realize how complicated I am._

 

It would be easier to say no. It would. She doesn’t want to go and look at this life of hers that she’s lived so fully in secret — this life that’s delivering consequences now, doling them out in the form of speeding bullets.

But she can’t. He’d ask questions. And she can’t have that.

“I’ll be there.”

 

The bell rings.

 

“You should go.” Maya is insistent, because she knows that he must be the type to get to class on time. “What do you have next?” _I should probably give him directions, right? That’s what a nice person would do._

“Biology,” he says, and that is all she needs to decide her trajectory for the rest of the day.

She directs him, gives him a _see you later_ in response to his final, meaningful gaze. 

She goes to the bathroom to throw up.

 

Then she leaves school altogether.


	3. three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is mostly some scene-setting, in case anyone required some illumination on what this AU is all about. Luckily, I have the next few chapters completely mapped out, which means that you'll hopefully be able to forgive me for this ~filler~ soon.
> 
> Follow me @mxyaharts on Tumblr for further shenanigans!

“Look, I get it,” Riley begins without missing a beat once Maya picks up the phone at her mother’s behest. Katy Hart is irritated by many things, but first and foremost driven off the edge by sounds that disrupt her nap before the graveyard shift. If Maya knows anything besides that, it’s that Riley will keep calling if she doesn’t pick up. So she does.

“You saw him first. Those are the rules. So, if you have some sort of _thing_ already —“

“Wait, we have rules?” Maya is genuinely perplexed. Riley must be referring to some general _girl code_ out there in the universe, because rules have been unnecessary with them. Always have. After all, the boys they’re interested in don’t ever intersect.

“Maybe we need them.” Riley responds in a feeble tone, clearly bothered by the prospect of instituting guidelines in this particular instance — guidelines she’d be on the losing side of by default. She is relinquishing a boy to Maya’s corner without even getting to know him, and Maya is sure that will poke at her for as long as Lucas is around.

Riley’s crushes are always frightening in Maya’s eyes; they consume her, and she is a hopeless romantic in every sense. She wants to believe the best in anyone who has captured her affections. She wants to believe that she will eventually get her way.

 

And Maya can’t destroy that hope — not for anything in the world.

 

“We’re practically strangers,” she insists, anxiously twirling the spiraled cord to her telephone around her finger as she lies, lies, _lies_. “And I’m not even interested. You know he’s not my type.”

 

( Or, more truthfully, _she’s_ not _his_ type. In the darkness, when everyone is far enough removed from their true selves, it makes sense. They align for a few moments. He is attracted to the fire.

But boys like him eventually stop playing with burning girls. The flames run them ragged. )

 

“Maya, you don’t have to do this for me. You at least know him better than I do, and there are so many other guys out there.”

There are, of course, but Riley only sees Lucas right now — even after only one day. Maya knows this.

“Riley,” Maya says sternly, desperate to get Riley to stop fighting her. The longer this goes on, the more difficult it will get — the more she will remember that this could end up disastrous if she unravels at the sight of them and the understanding of all she stands to lose. “There is only one _you_ in the world. He deserves to know you.”

It’s like she can see Riley’s tentative and then unstoppable smile burst from its seams, and that alone almost dissipates the tightness she feels in her chest.

_Almost._

 

▼

 

She promised she’d go, and as far as she understands, she and Lucas keep their promises to one another. Besides, she has no excuse; her mother has already cleared out, leaving Maya to her devices.

Avenue B is quiet in comparison to the bluster Maya already hears a couple avenues and streets away. Still, she surveys the scene once she steps out into the blistering cold.

There’s a relatively decent congregation set to sleep in her block’s tent city for the night, beatniks and activists and posers all lumped together and braving the season. Years ago, she pitied them all, before she realized that they all _liked_ being a part of the elements, pieces of this puzzle that the city couldn’t decipher.

 

They were outsiders, and they _wanted_ it that way.

 

( Once, she considered if she was bound to end up a part of that inner circle, headed straight for the streets with nowhere else to go. She shook the thought away before it became pervasive and overstayed its welcome. )

 

Save for a few nods of acknowledgment from the regulars, she remains unbothered. No one hollers at her, threatens her.

Oftentimes, the Matthews are intent on lecturing her when she insists on heading home alone from Riley’s — but what they never realized that there was a code to abide by on the rough side of town. If you were a familiar face, you were safe.

Maya, who had lived in Alphabet City for as long as she could remember — after the dust had settled and her mother concluded that it was impossible to live anywhere else without the help of someone else — never felt threatened.

She was poor and lowly in the eyes of the rest of the city, which meant that her high school hallways and Bleeker Street were far more terrifying than the grungy pastures she knew.

 

( _Teenagers think they’re invincible,_ Mr. Matthews always said in response.

But that couldn’t have been further from the truth. Maya never thought she was invincible.

She just knew she would survive longer at home. )

 

▼

 

Avenue D is bustling. Though Maya very rarely gets particulars to these sorts of parties, the whole system relying on the tiniest bit of secrecy for the _cool_ factor, she immediately knows where she’s headed.

There are groups of teenagers huddled outside of an apartment building that’s clearly seen better days. Its outside is dilapidated beyond even Maya’s expectations, though the locations for these parties are rarely ever glamorous. She takes a moment to watch the bubbly, giggling adolescents who don’t even seem to feel the cold as she shivers just a few feet away. They openly carry Solo cups, light cigarettes, and yell into the night sky.

There’s no reason to maintain any sort of propriety on their part, she knows. The rookie cops who usually patrol the neighborhood don’t ever bother with these gatherings, dismissing them as more trouble than they’re worth.

 

( _If they want to destroy themselves, be my guest,_ she heard one spit out during a morning after when she was stumbling into daylight and greeting the world again. )

 

Freezing, she curses at herself for even stopping for a moment, making a beeline into the place. The lobby is just as packed with kids of the same sort, the familiar stench of bile and smoke invading Maya’s senses almost immediately.

She winces, sure that she shouldn’t be there, but no one in Alphabet City leaves a party early once they’ve arrived.

 

“Hey.”

 

Lucas always begins any conversation they’ve ever had with some sense of trepidation, seemingly unsure of whether Maya _actually_ wants to speak to him. Maya has never understood that — if anything, _she_ should be meek — but she doesn’t comment on it. Somehow, she thinks that would only make the problem worse.

She turns towards the sound of his voice, surveying his current state. It’s the usual: a t-shirt and jeans save for the nearly depleted cigarette planted between two fingers on his right hand.

Lucas doesn’t smoke all that often — only when he’s particularly agitated about something. Maya offers him a comforting smile after registering it but doesn’t make any move towards him. That would be a step too far.

“You want to talk about it?” She asks, but the space between them already makes the inquiry seem insincere.

“Same old, same old,” he replies, dropping the cigarette onto the lobby floor and grounding it in with his sneaker. “Nothing worth mentioning.”

If he doesn’t have a single quip, that means it’s worse than usual. Maya’s almost angry with herself for having collected all of these mannerisms and facts in her head because it betrays everything she’s told Riley.

They do know each other well. Probably too well for their own good.

“You didn’t really have to come if it’s that bad,” she nearly whispers, awkwardly rubbing at an arm. All of a sudden, she has no idea what to do around him, like they’ve pressed rewind on everything now that they’ve seen each other in _real life_ — and not this small bubble in the universe where everything’s heightened and abnormal. “Hell’s Kitchen is a damn long way to come.”

 

( When she first learned he lived so far away, she was amused; what the hell was he doing around here, slumming it?

Hell’s Kitchen wasn’t the prettiest, but it still wasn’t Alphabet City. He had debauchery in his own neighborhood, late nights in Times Square and sneaking up fire escapes to Broadway theatres — the kinds of things that perhaps Riley would even find acceptable with some prodding, but still enough fun. Why was he giving all of that up?

She asked him as much as he sighed into the first cigarette she’d ever seen him smoke.

“This is where I remind myself that I’m a person,” he says, his tone even and refusing to betray any sort of emotion. “Because it’s pretty easy to forget that you’re alive sometimes.”

It’s all she gets right then and there. The rest — his family, his father — comes in small pieces that form one of the few complete people she’s come to know. )

 

“I wouldn’t just leave you hanging,” he tosses back in a staunch sort of tone, taking the opportunity to close the space between them.

 

She feels claustrophobic, but she can’t move either. _She can’t._

“And it’s not like I have your phone number.” He seems irritated by this fact. Maya thinks about it for a second and then realizes he’s right. How could she be so close and intertwined with a person she’s never been able to call?

“Sorry,” she says, and means it, but she doesn’t attempt to remedy the situation.

He nods, never one to press something until he gets what he wants. Then, without warning — something he is prone to avoid giving — he leans in and kisses her, his hand moving to stroke her cheek.

He tastes like the smoke that’s just entered his lungs and all the things that Maya is already familiar with, and so she doesn’t separate from him as quickly as she should. But after a few moments she does, her eyes averting his gaze until he removes his hand and provides her a little more space.

“Do you want a drink or something?” He’s always patient with Maya — too patient, probably — and over these few weeks, this probably isn’t the oddest thing she’s done. So he waits.

“I’m not drinking,” she mumbles, not so subtly wiping what is left of him from her lips.

“Is everything alright?” He reaches out to grab her hand in the same way that he did in the hallway, clearly intent on getting through to her. “We can talk if you need to. Whatever it is — I’ve got you.”

She looks up because she can’t help it. It what she needs to hear, but she can’t talk to him. Not about any of it.

 

_I’m not very good at talking about myself._

_That’s a shame._

_Why?_

_Because you seem interesting. You seem like someone people should get to know._

_That’s quite the pickup line._

_Maybe. And maybe it’s just true._

 

Her mouth and throat have dried thanks to all the words she refuses to let escape. Instead of letting them free, she clears her throat and makes an entirely different choice.

 

“Riley likes you.”

 

“Your friend from earlier today?” He raises an eyebrow, unsure of how Riley even became a topic of conversation.

“She’s really sweet and the kind of girl everyone wants to go for —“ Maya stops herself because she’s speaking at a mile a minute and can’t keep up. “And she likes you.”

A pin could drop then and Maya would be able to register its every beat; everything has gone out of focus besides Lucas, who is silent for a time. He’s contemplative, unsure of how Maya wants him to respond — and Maya knows that he’s still out to please her.

“You know I won’t hurt her, right?” He asks this only as a formality, because, well, Maya wouldn’t have told him about Riley’s crush if that wasn’t the case. There’s one problem: Maya knows that he’s not asking this to get her blessing — he’s asking because he wants to break his lack of interest in Riley gently. And that’s not the point of all this.

“No —“ she starts, but it sounds too much like a plea, so she reroutes herself. “I mean that you should see where it goes with her. She’s my favorite person in the world.”

She gulps.

 

“And she deserves a guy like you.”

 

It’s not what she says right then, but what she implies.

 

_You deserve something easier than this. Something that makes sense._


	4. four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully this quick turnaround is enough of a consolation prize for the four month wait?
> 
> Things are finally getting interesting.
> 
> Follow me on Tumblr @mxyaharts~

“I don’t understand what’s going on.” Lucas is mystified by whatever Maya is trying to sell him, and for once, it shows.

Maya pities him; after all, he probably thinks they have a good thing going. So does she, if she’s honest with herself.

But it’s best to end it before the foundation beneath them crumbles and everything she has to share spills out. Before Riley loses interest or gets her heart broken and Lucas won’t have an option who Maya can stomach.

 

“I just don’t think this is gonna work,” she tries, and then decides it’s not firm enough. “I don’t think it’s working, okay?”

 

Her vision reopens and she considers the kids who surround them, how thrilled they are to just let loose and be reckless. This conversation isn’t meant for where they are if real emotions come into play. Harsh rejection? That was the ticket in this world where people were easily tossed aside.

“Did I do something wrong?” Lucas has always been desperate to unravel her to her core — a fact that Maya is uncomfortable with but has allowed to simmer. If that’s his one character flaw, it could be much worse. But all things considered, she would have preferred that he be a serial killer in this moment if it got her out of discussing the tough stuff.

“If this is about us going to the same school, we can work it out.” He’s careful to pronounce every syllable in the statement, assuring that she hears each one. “We can be normal.”

 

 _Normal_. It’s a word Maya detests because it seems so unreachable, even on her good days. It is the mark of a teenager who isn’t grappling with her realities, the kind that forgets that they are the AIDS generation, the crime generation, the ones who spiral for no reason other than it seeming like there’s nothing else to do.

 

Lucas is normal and misguided. She is abnormal and can’t do anything about it; her mistakes are written into her skin, her birthright. There are things Maya is meant for that Lucas will never be. He’ll be the quarterback, the NYU student, the guy who stops talking about his circumstances because they stop mattering.

He’ll be all of that so long as he stops being misguided — and Maya is the one who’s leading him the wrong way.

“I can’t.” She delivers perhaps the only entirely truthful thing she’s let out in the entire conversation. “I’m not built for this. _I don’t want this._ ”

The last part is what truly stings Lucas to his core, and Maya has to watch his face drop completely. It hurts because what hurts him _always_ manages to hurt her now, and there’s no stopping it. She can’t understand it — having known him for such a short time and yet not being able to detach herself from him.

Her expression must betray her because Lucas sees a glint of insincerity in her eyes and pounces at the opportunity to question her.

 

“So you’re just saying none of this matters?”

 

He is defensive, as if Maya’s told him he’s completely worthless; it doesn’t help that she identifies with that insecurity. She wants to scream. She wants to run.

She does neither of those things. Instead, she remains quiet.

Lucas fills in for her silence, refusing to relent.

“I can’t just sleep with someone and say that it doesn’t matter.”

 _There it is._ He is upfront and even a bit coarse when he says it, admitting the real truth that lies between them.

 

Maya is brash and she is bold, but she isn’t cavalier enough to say it doesn’t matter. Of course it matters. It matters more than he knows.

 

The clock is ticking on her courage. Bile is rising through her throat, as it has for the past few days.

She can’t even keep her expression in check; she is affected, and it shows. Perhaps too much, because Lucas tone gets softer, gentler.

“I can’t just talk with someone the way I talk with you and say it doesn’t matter.”

Maya has learned about many of his layers — his insecurities about going back to school after getting kicked out and missing nearly an entire semester, his inability to make sense of New York City and all it has to offer, his tendency to fall deeply for _anything_. Baseball, horseback riding. _A girl._

She is trying to exploit them for all they’re worth, but there’s a slight problem: he may not know as much about her as she does him, but he knows enough. And he knows Maya feels deeply, even if she does not fall as he does. Even if she refuses to fall.

“I just can’t do this,” she says, because there’s nothing left in her. There’s no elaborate excuse. “ _I can’t._ ”

 

_I don’t understand any of this._

_Some people just fit, you know._

_Like they’re puzzle pieces?_

_If that’s how you want to see it, sure._

 

“But Riley can.”

She has to slip in that last bit for her best friend, the girl made of stardust who doesn’t know heartache like this. And she won’t — not at the hand of Lucas, who won’t want her to hurt like he does right now.

Riley will hurt eventually. Maya just wants to prevent the hurt for as long as possible.

Lucas looks so pained, so determined to eject himself from the world entirely. His expression slowly but surely fades to nothingness. Maya watches the excruciating transformation, but she says nothing else.

 

There’s no room for anything else.

 

“If that’s how you want it, fine.” It’s such a gruff, childish response to come out of him, but he doesn’t say it with any malice. Instead, every word is laced with defeat, and Maya is both relieved and devastated that he’s stopped fighting her.

Sometimes, she wondered if it was easy to give herself to Lucas because she never had to see him otherwise — because she could just stop going to parties altogether and never see him again. Because he was almost a myth, this piece of her life that was barely there until she wanted it to be.

But then, right then, she was sure it wasn’t true. It was easy because it felt right. Because she wanted him to be right for her. But that was wishful thinking, and it was time to let it go.

“I’ll still be around,” she replies as some sort of consolation prize. “In case you ever, y’know, need to talk.”

He nods, and she knows that door is closed already. Whatever they shared will be kept secret, but there will be no more of it.

 

( _I should have let myself remember what it was like to kiss him,_ she thinks. )

 

“I’ll see you at school tomorrow,” he mumbles, his gaze now wandering away from her. “They called attendance in biology and I realized you were supposed to be there. You should go to class, you know.”

She knows. She just doesn’t see the point anymore. But she nods anyway.

“You’ll see me around,” she counters, nearly repeating herself — but there’s no other response to give. She can’t lie and say she’ll be in class. Knowing her these days, she probably won’t be.

“Yeah, I will,” he says half-heartedly, his voice lowering in volume as he continues — because he no longer has the energy to speak to her, and because he’s already walking away and out of the building.

She doesn’t turn to watch him leave. She doesn’t run after him.

For the first time in ages, she walks home alone.

 

For the first time ever, she leaves a party early.

 

▼

 

Farkle is suspicious of Lucas’ intentions from the beginning, which he, of course, voices to Maya during lunch the next day. Riley and Lucas are far out of earshot by then, with his insisting that he should go to the library and attempt to catch up on classes and Riley offering to help — but not without a comforting smile of approval from Maya.

Lucas has hardly acknowledged her at all — not even in biology, which she managed to show up to. She decides it’s probably for the best.

“Riley says you know him.” He says this between bites of his sandwich.

“I met him once in the middle of a blizzard and then we went our separate ways,” she replies, giving the abbreviated version of the lie she’s spun together. This time, she has no telephone cord to wrap around her finger or even lunch to eat; she didn’t even get a tray, fully abandoning the hope of keeping any food down at this time of day. “That doesn’t qualify as knowing him. But he was nice enough, so Riley can do what she wants.”

Farkle is far and away the most deductive person Maya knows, which makes trying to lie ridiculously difficult. She panics when she has to toss even a _fib_ in his direction. It has nothing to do with his hyper-intelligence; he just knows what makes people tick. Maya wishes she had that gift. Or, at the very least, she wishes she could pry it from his hands right now.

“ _Maya Hart_ is honestly saying ‘Riley can do what she wants’ right now? Do you realize that you get suspicious of guys who you think are _too_ polite around Riley?”

It’s true. Maya is quick to discern who’s worthy of Riley’s attention. All of her suitors are nice enough, but no one is ever perfect. Riley deserves perfect.

“Well, I have a good feeling about this one. That’s all.” She wishes she had a tray in front of her with food to stab with a fork. She needs to use her hands, which are now grounded on top of her jeans to hide the sweat escaping from their pores.

“That’s awfully optimistic of you…” Farkle already knows something is up. He’s trying to give her an in before an inquisition begins.

She turns to him completely, keeping her gaze tight on his eyes. She raises a brow. Anything to look intimidating.

 

“Maybe I’ve turned over a new leaf. How about that?”

 

Farkle only smirks, which prompts Maya to rise from her seat and nix the conversation entirely.

“I have better things to do,” she says, sauntering out of the cafeteria as if she’s won an argument.

 

If anything, she’s only made things worse.

 

▼

 

The nurse’s office.

She’s in the nurse’s office.

Only the nurse’s office would look this way, with its disturbingly bright fluorescent lighting and stupid inspirational posters.

 

Her head is throbbing. _Ouch._

 

“W-What?” She begins to raise her head slowly, wincing all the way through. “I was on my way to the art studio…”

“And then you fainted, Ms. Hart.” Nurse Jackson clearly isn’t in the mood for innuendo.

“Maya?” She turns her head at the sound of Farkle’s voice. “I saw you faint…and I brought you here.” His brow is furrowed, etched in concern. His worry is the last thing Maya needs, but she’s sure it’s here to stay.

“When’s the last time you’ve eaten anything?” The nurse is also uninterested in any idle conversation she and Farkle are looking to have.

Maya thinks. It had to have been yesterday afternoon, right? And then she threw it all up. She hadn’t tried again.

 

_Shit._

 

“I get distracted sometimes,” she mumbles, directing her energies into massaging her temples. She doesn’t need a lecture, and given that much of the faculty has already labeled her a lost cause, she hopes she won’t get one.

“Well, I suggest that you _un_ -distract yourself,” the nurse retorts, extending a paper cup filled with orange juice in Maya’s direction.

She takes it, drinks it sloppily. Suddenly, she realizes how hungry and thirsty she actually is. In her periphery, she can see Farkle, patiently waiting.

Once she finishes, she gets up from the cot she’s been laid in, ignoring the fact that she’s still slightly light-headed. She’s endured worse.

“I should get to class,” she rushes out, as if that’s where she’s headed.

Nurse Jackson is already attending to paperwork Maya has probably kept her from, her eyes firmly on her clipboard as she scribbles. “And take Mr. Minkus with you.”

 

So she does. Or, rather, he follows her without her prompting.

 

“Usually I would get a thank you,” he calls after her.

“Thank you,” she responds gruffly, trying her best to keep marching forward to those front doors, which are just a turn away.

Then, Farkle’s running to catch up with her speedwalking, stepping right in front of her trajectory.

“Get out of my way, Farkle,” she asserts with as best of a growl she can muster — which isn’t great, all things considered.

“You can’t just keep running,” He says this with a certain amount of authority, the kind that makes Maya’s heart drop. “And pretend like people aren’t going to notice. You throw up every morning like clockwork. And you’re isolating yourself from all of us — like you have something you need to hide.”

She just stares at him. There’s nothing she can say to deter him.

 

“You can’t do this alone.”

 

She wants to start crying. Desperately. But she won’t. Her front teeth sink into her bottom lip, and she stops herself.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she insists before forcing herself past him and out of the door.

 

He doesn’t follow.

 

( She’s not sure how to feel about that. )

 

▼

 

She expects Riley to call, but that’s not the person from the Matthews home who gets in touch.

“You’re in real danger of getting kicked out of school, Maya,” Mr. Matthews states, his tone not at all forgiving.

 

( Maya is his second daughter in many respects, but she is wayward more often than not — the prodigal daughter who forgets to return home.

She tries not to think about disappointing him. It only makes it worse. )

 

“I know,” she replies, and it truly sounds like she doesn’t care. “And I was thinking of transferring to P.S. 97 anyway. The walk to the subway is way too long, and that doesn’t even factor in the commute —”

 

“What the hell is going on with you?”

 

Maya’s chest tightens. This is the most bent out of shape Mr. Matthews has ever been, and she can’t imagine seeing his face right now.

“Nothing,” she says, but it’s bullshit that he’ll challenge, so she amends it before he has the chance to poke at her. “Nothing unexpected.”

She hears Mr. Matthews sigh on the other side of the line. “What do you mean, Maya?”

She doesn’t speak again, only picks at her cuticles.

“I need you to talk to someone. Riley is really concerned about you and I can’t say she’s wrong to be.”

So Farkle didn’t tell Riley. And if he didn’t tell Riley, he didn’t tell anyone. The weight on Maya’s shoulders is slightly relieved, but not by much.

Regardless, she feels it lift, and somehow, the fountain in her begins to uncover itself. She hiccups, and then her breathing gets ragged.

“I can’t,” she chokes out, a sob stuck in her throat.

 

“Try me.”

 

This is when she’s supposed to spill everything, let herself be vulnerable in front of one of the few people she is certain she can trust. But he’ll be disappointed, and she can’t have that.

Hell, she can’t even say the truth out loud.

So, she hangs up and allows him to be disappointed for an entirely different reason.

 

▼

 

After a few minutes, she calls another number.

 

“I can’t say it.”

 

She doesn’t apologize; apologies are usually unnecessary between the two of them, and she takes that as her only reprieve.

Farkle exhales. “Okay.”

 

They sit on the line in silence until, finally — anxiety be damned — she falls asleep.


	5. five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a warning: updates will probably slow a bit now that the plot is ~thickening, so to speak. But there's a silver lining: next chapter is much longer than I intended and there's nothing I can edit down, oops. So you'll have plenty to read when it's up!
> 
> Until then, enjoy this chapter. c:

“Do you know what you’re going to do?”

 

Lunchtimes without Riley and Lucas have resorted to this: Maya and Farkle awkwardly shuffling around one another, attempting to understand the information they both know.

It takes him a week and a half to mention the whole _thing_ concretely, which Maya gives him a sliver of credit for. She thought he’d crack the next day.

That doesn’t keep her from being irritated, though.

“When I said ‘I can’t say it’, I actually meant ‘we don’t talk about it ever’.”

This time, she has some food to stab with her fork. Silver lining?

“That seems impractical,” he replies in his usual Farkle way, stating the obvious for the sake of egging her on. “Considering this whole thing has a time limit as far as when you start to —”

“I’m an impractical person,” she immediately shoots his way.

Thankfully, that’s that, because as she finishes that last statement, Riley and Lucas appear, lunch trays in tow.

 

( Or not so thankfully, really. Both scenarios — a full-fledged conversation with Farkle about that _thing_ or one with Riley and Lucas about their budding romance — are the equivalent to a root canal in Maya’s eyes. )

 

She and Lucas haven’t spoken much, save for a few kind greetings when they pass each other by. She’s still going to parties every now and then, too tempted by the sound that reverberates across the neighborhood to stop completely, but she hasn’t seen him at any of them.

 

All is well, she decides. They’re settling into the places they belong, heartache be damned.

 

Riley is illuminated in his presence, fulfilled thanks to this nice guy she likes liking her back. Maya is learning to be happy for her like she’d learn any school subject, taking it slow and pacing herself. Rome wasn’t built in a day.

“I think we’ve made real progress,” she says once they settle themselves at the table, sitting side by side. She’s referring to Lucas’ game of catch-up, obviously, which is going swimmingly so far. He’s committed, which is more than Maya can say about herself.

“I’d be lost without you, for the record,” Lucas lets out before biting into a slice of pizza, as if it isn’t one of the most romantic things he could have said. It’s his language, Maya realizes, so Riley must hear diatribes of that sort all the time.

Riley lights up, but it’s subsides rather quickly. Maya takes her assumption as fact; Lucas’ compliments have already become a part of her world.

 

_What a lucky world that is._

 

Maya’s expression falters for the slightest of a second, but then something registers — Farkle examining the change. She plasters a smile on her face, pretends as if the slip up never happened. Her fingertips playfully crawl across the table to poke at Riley, make fun of her for loving Lucas’ pickup lines.

Riley rolls her eyes, but she does it with a smile, welcoming Maya’s idiocy.

Maya decides this is the way things should go from now on.

 

_Lather, rinse, repeat._

 

▼

 

Mr. Matthews also gives her more time than she would have expected. But she certainly doesn’t anticipate him upping the ante.

Intent on skipping history for some insane day in a row, she is confronted with the sight of the phantom in her life, horror movie music included.

There Katy Hart is, her diner uniform still on from her shift. She is displeased, but anyone could have guessed that.

 

“Where the hell is your head at?”

 

_Not at school, clearly._ But Maya knows better than to say that out loud.

 

▼

 

It’s not that Maya doesn’t love her mother. It’s not that her mother doesn’t love her.

It’s this she tries to remember while sitting in Mr. Matthews’ classroom at the end of the day — after she’s attended all of her classes for the day, _thank you very much_. There wasn’t any getting out of that.

“I don’t understand why this is happening,” Katy starts, sounding every bit as confounded as Maya could have predicted she would be.

 

( It’s that Maya and her mother don’t know how to relate to one another.

Katy Hart grew up in Alphabet City, married a man in Alphabet City, and had a child in Alphabet City — though not necessarily in that order.

She also got divorced in Alphabet City.

She’s never going to leave. She knows this. Maya knows it too.

Maya takes none of her mother’s actions personally. The occasional one night stands she leaves subway tokens for, the shifts that keep her out of sight and out of mind — they are just regular pieces of her existence rather than things worth complaining about.

When she was young, Katy said she was the most forgiving child in the world. That was to her benefit then.

Now, all they ever do is speak in apologies.

_I’m sorry for being a fuck up. I’m sorry I can’t do any better._

The foundation to their relationship wasn’t quite laid properly, and so they stumble. They are both clueless.

They are both storms separate from one another, causing different kinds of chaos. )

 

“Maya was doing well when she started here,” Mr. Matthews offers, attempting to make the blow a little less awful. For what it’s worth, he’s telling the truth; Maya tried to care about her studies at the start of high school before she realized that there was no catching up to Farkle or Riley, who were clearly built to be in a classroom. “But ever since, she’s gradually begun to cut her classes. At this point, she cuts more than she attends, and, well —“

He clears his throat, a sign that he’s about to say something out of turn.

“Considering that this isn’t her district school, the administration will have very little reason to keep her if they catch wind of her truancy record.”

He doesn’t say it out of cruelty; after all, he doesn’t want Maya going to P.S. 97, where she was zoned to attend — a mess of a school filled with teachers who don’t care and students who don’t learn.

It’s also something she’s heard before, a calm reminder that seems more like a prophecy now. She isn’t learning much of anything at Abigail Adams either, other than figuring out the places where she doesn’t belong, among kids who don’t make the kinds of choices she does.

“The principal is dying to get rid of me and you know it,” she interjects, already finished with the discussion. This whole thing is about the beginning of the end, not finding a solution; there’s very little Mr. Matthews can do for her now after spending so much of her life defending her from the kinds of things she’s actively choosing for herself. “What are we supposed to do about it now?”

Katy shushes her, a mild sort of response considering how belligerent she can get when Maya is particularly smart-mouthed; she’s never been someone who’s enjoyed getting spoken over, and that’s something Maya _loves_ doing.

 

Still, it’s just a shush — a kind of _the adults are talking_ shush.

 

“What can we do?” She asks, basically the equivalent of Maya’s inquiry, minus the smartass edge.

“It’s not a matter of what _we_ can do,” Mr. Matthews replies, and Maya wants to groan at what’s coming. “It’s about what Maya can do.”

Maya crosses her arms, feels the four other eyes in the room on her, and wants to implode. Her temperature is spiking, or at least it feels that way; she can feel herself blushing from the attention she’s receiving.

She’s never done well with adult figures, let alone two at once; though getting slaps on the wrist are a part of her everyday life, she hasn’t gotten any better at receiving them.

“Fine, I’ll start going to class,” she acquiesces, uncrossing her arms and waving them around as if she’s made some sort of dramatic declaration. “Is that all I need to say?”

She can go to class, all things considered. As far as she knows, she won’t have to do it for much longer anyway — not with what lies ahead.

“It’s not just that,” he prods. “You have to mean it, because this is your last shot.”

It is, but not for the reasons he believes it to be. Maya catches his eye and they still for a moment, just looking at one another. There’s a glint behind his eye, a reminder that he knows something is up.

_Geez_ , the phone call. She’d nearly wiped it from her memory; he hadn’t mentioned it at all on the couple nights she’d gone to Riley’s house for dinner.

She nods. “I understand.”

The next moments of silence are excruciating; was he really going to give her up, tell her mother to waterboard her until everything spilled out?

He doesn’t. He only rises from the seat behind his desk, comes around, and reaches a hand out for Maya to shake.

 

“Deal?”

 

It’s childish, binding a promise to a handshake. But it’s all Mr. Matthews has left in him after all of her unruly acts of grandeur. She feels bad for him, truth be told.

So she takes his hand and gives it a firm shake, telling herself that this unwritten contract isn’t the end of the world.

 

Other things will upend her world in the end.

 

Katy leaves first, entirely separate from Maya — leaving Mr. Matthews to what he does best. Putting Maya in her place isn’t her strong suit.

“You listen to him, alright?” She says into Maya’s hair while giving her a hug with all she’s got. Maya holds to her tightly, almost for dear life.

 

( _I wish I had listened to him._ )

 

After her mother is gone, Mr. Matthews moves to the doorway, assuring that Maya will have to hear his last words.

 

“My door is always open. You know that, right?”

 

She does, so she nods again.

If only she could take advantage.

 

▼

 

She doesn’t count on Lucas still being at school. If anything, she wishes against herself and hopes that he’s already on Riley’s tail, spending as much time with her as humanly possible.

But there he is, situated on a bench while taking off his cleats. Maya has half the mind to turn and walk out of the front doors, and nearly does — but his voice stops her.

“Baseball tryouts,” he says meekly, setting his cleats aside and beginning to slip into his sneakers.

“Ah,” she responds, as if that gave her the answers to all of the questions in the universe.

 

“You headed somewhere?”

 

She could lie and say that she has a night full of plans, a roster full of parties to attend. But, as it stands, she’s quickly tiring of lying.

“Not right now.” She shrugs to make it seem that much more inconsequential.

He pats the place next to him on the bench. “C’mon.”

_He’s asking me to sit down next to him?_

They’d spent every day since their pseudo-argument avoiding conversation as much as humanly possible. Where had the change come from?

Regardless, she wants to sit next to him and erase those days — erase what she said.

But she can’t, so she just sits and waits for his next move. She’s staring at the walls in front of them, lined with rust colored lockers filled with the lives of kids she’d maybe passed by in the halls once or twice. It’s the kind of observation he’d say no one else would make but her.

 

“I want to not be mad at you,” he admits. “But I don’t know how.”

 

She can see him looking at her from the corner of her eye, but her gaze remains trained straight ahead in the safe zone.

“I don’t know how to help you with that.” What is she meant to do — apologize? That would mean that she was wrong, and though she desperately wants to be, she is sure she isn’t.

 

( They spent nearly an entire party in mid-December on the carpet of a stranger’s bedroom, her head laid on his stomach while he idly played with her hair.

It was one of the more posh gatherings they’d been to; the vast majority of them were in apartment buildings taken up by squatters after their landlords left them for greener pastures. Instead, they were in a townhouse on Avenue C, in some bedroom with star stickers on the ceiling.

They were sitting in the darkness, staring up at those stickers, glowing green.

“Must be a nice thing to fall asleep to,” she drawled, the alcohol setting into all the right places. She was a bit more buzzed than Lucas, who wouldn’t have agreed to spending his night looking up at a ceiling as if it were a night sky if she hadn’t insisted on it. “Wish my bedroom was this fancy.” She yawned, snuggling further into Lucas’ form.

“You ever think that maybe you’re wishing for the wrong things?” Every once in a while, Lucas would ask her a poignant question that she didn’t necessarily know how to answer — but they were always comforting to her, indicative of the fact that he was wise beyond his years and she could maybe learn something from him.

“Well, you tell me what I’m supposed to wish for, then.” She swallowed thickly, waiting for the kind of response built to change her entire outlook on life. She’d placed that much hope in him, and she didn’t know when she had started to.

“Wish to stay you, exactly as you are,” he begins, his fingertips carefully traveling the expanse of Maya’s scalp. “Because she’s pretty great.”

It’s the kind of affirmation that makes her feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and she can’t say the alcohol is to blame. He’d gotten more comfortable with them over time as he became less mystified by her, the city girl — the one who was simultaneously unbothered and uncomfortable with how little she had. The city girl who was convinced that she had little to offer.

“So Maya wouldn’t be Maya with all the expensive trimmings, huh?” It’s a joke because she already knows the answer. Very little of Maya would have existed without where she came from. But very rarely did someone say that there was nothing in her worth fixing.

He doesn’t answer, only chuckles for a few seconds, so she speaks again.

“I think you’re pretty great too, for the record.”

What he said didn’t change her outlook, but he came pretty damn close. )

 

“How’s Riley?” Maya is almost sure she asks to torture herself because it comes out with zero thought.

Lucas sighs, runs a hand through his hair. It’s not a question he wants to answer, evidently.

“She’s a really nice girl,” he concedes. “And she’s helped me out a lot.”

That’s all she’s going to get? It’s like pulling teeth with him. Knowing how many words Riley can cram into a minute if she tries hard enough, she knows that Lucas is withholding most of the story.

“It seems to be going well,” she offers. “Considering you’re already using your famous lines on her.”

_Eek_. She probably could have used better tact on that last bit.

Her gaze finally moves to him, a silent apology for being more biting than she aimed to be.

 

“I’m doing what I can, but I can’t help how I feel.”

 

She hoped him being mad at her would take care of that; if it were that easy, it would have justified her pushing him away in the first place. It would have meant that their relationship was _out of sight, out of mind_ in one fell swoop.

 

But it wasn’t that easy.

 

“You can,” she contends, her fingernails digging into the threads of her denim jeans. The intrusion stings her skin, but if her hands aren’t occupied, they’ll take hold of him and bring him back into her universe. “And Riley can change anyone’s heart. You’ll see.”

It’s something she believes — because who _wouldn’t_ want good-hearted, good-natured Riley — but some part of her wishes she didn’t. It’s the part she silences then, because it’s selfish, and Riley would never be that envious of her.

Lucas only laughs, but in a bitter sort of way. It’s a sound she associates with his frustration — the sound he makes when he’s recounting his dad’s newest fuckup or his family’s newest disaster. It has never, ever been directed towards her.

“Nice talking to you,” he says. Then, he leaves the bench and leaves her alone entirely, his steps growing more and more distant.

Maya stares at the empty space he’s left until her vision completely blurs.

 

( She idly traces circles into her abdomen for a time, but once she realizes she’s doing it, she snatches her hand away as if she’s committed a crime. )


	6. six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Surprise — I haven't disappeared. :x Here's the super long chapter, as promised.
> 
> See you all in a few days, hopefully, but there's a nice, long Maya/Lucas scene to tide you all over.
> 
> P.S.: Thank you so much for 1000 hits! I couldn't be more thrilled.

“I can’t believe how quickly things are falling into place,” Riley says a few days later, her energy frenetic and joyful. Maya is thrilled to see her happiness shine through, even if it’s exhausting her as time marches forward.

Her visits to the Matthews apartment are slowly but surely tapering off, but not so obviously that Riley will comment on it. Maya is careful to visit _enough_ to ward off suspicion, which works well enough for Riley — but not so much for her father, who is all too aware of Maya’s receding presence in their lives. He hasn’t mentioned it, though, just kept it to knowing glances. So long as he doesn’t talk about it, Maya won’t acknowledge it.

It is on one of the few nights she sleeps over these days that Riley begins to speak about Lucas with this sort of enthusiasm. Maya is certain of why that is — in true Abigail Adams High School fashion, there’s a winter dance fast approaching to fully greet them into the new semester. And not just any dance: a Sadie Hawkins dance, which means that Riley must spend time with her agonizing over whether asking Lucas is appropriate.

“Then why not just seal the deal, dumb-dumb?” It’s about as gentle as Maya can be with Riley in this situation, simultaneously desperate to make their relationship move as fast as possible and desperate to have it implode outside of her own doing. “It’s not like he’s gonna say no.”

“He might!” Riley pipes up, the only pessimistic optimist Maya knows, as always. “I dunno. He might be waiting for someone else to ask him, for all we know.”

Maya furrows her brow and wonders if Riley is referring to her, but she says this so innocently that she concludes that it’s not about her at all — just Riley’s wavering faith in Lucas as a person because of how good and even _perfect_ he seems.

“He’s the new guy,” she prods, poking Riley right in her chest for good measure. “So I highly doubt he has anyone else he can possibly be interested in. You two spend all of your time together these days.”

She pauses to bite her lower lip, stifling any sort of adverse reaction she has to the thought. Instead, she smiles as her teeth sink further into her lip. “Huddled up in the library together, _just_ the two of you…”

 

The end of that last statement comes out in a singsong manner, as if she’s about to sing that nursery rhyme: _first comes love, then comes —_

 

“Are we really together all the time?” Riley is clearly thrilled by the prospect, but her expression quickly fades as she focuses in on Maya. “I’ve been ignoring you, haven’t I? I don’t mean to. I just — he’s so nice and —”

“It’s fine, Riles. I’m not flailing around lost without you.” Maya cracks another smile, pretends it’s alright. She’s not quite sure what’s worse — not having Riley at her beckon call whenever she needs her, or seeing Riley sink herself fully into someone she once knew intrinsically. “You deserve to let yourself go wild with a boy every once in a while.”

And she does, under certain parameters. Maya definitely doesn’t want to see her best friend adopt her own definition of wild.

“But there has to be a way to make this even…” Riley says, her trailing off serving as an indication that she’s trying to hint at something.

Maya groans. Under no circumstances is she looking for a _date_. She doesn’t even want to go to the dance — not that Riley is aware, of course, but she was hoping that she’d find out the night of when she didn’t appear at her house to get ready, dress in tow.

“C’mon, there has to be some guy that you’re into and want to ask.” Riley clucks her tongue as she attempts to drum up a few names.

 

“Derek?”

Pseudo-boyfriend from freshman year. She dumped him before they even got started, though he’s always claimed it was the other way around.

She shakes her head.

 

“Adam?”

Summer after freshman year. He was nice enough until he came around her side of town. His idea of a date was throwing eggs at tent cities. _No thanks._

She scoffs.

 

“Jason?”

The guy she maybe, sort of blew off for Lucas. He was none too pleased and called her a slut, though she gave no indication it was even about another guy. She never mentioned it to Riley, which is why he’s even being brought up.

 

“We’re not gonna find anyone, and it’s fine.” Maya sighs, exasperated by the entire conversation. Going through her rolodex of bad ideas is just giving her a headache, though she knows that Riley means well.

Dating sounds like a _supremely_ bad idea; yet another thing to add to the heap of complicated _issues_ she’s currently juggling. If she continues shooting down all of Riley’s suggestions, she’ll have to stop eventually.

“So…” Riley is officially at a loss. “Do you just want to go to the dance stag?”

Maya has two options: breaking her absence to Riley now or lying her ass off.

“Sure, fine by me.” She chooses the latter, clearly. Lying may be getting old, but Riley’s never-ending insistence that she attend will break her in two. Besides, once the dust settles and Riley realizes she isn’t there that night, she’ll have Lucas to distract her.

And it’s not like Maya wants to bear witness to that anyway.

She takes Riley’s hand as she had hundreds of times over her short little life. “I’ll be okay. I don’t need a date to make me happy. If you’re there, I’m there.”

That bit of comfort may come back to sting her if Riley remembers, but Maya holds onto Lucas as her only hope, the one who will break the fall of Riley’s realization.

 

( _I should really stop holding onto him._ )

 

▼

 

Farkle may as well have kicked her in the ribs with how quickly he knocks the wind out of her the next morning. Maya is in the middle of counting down to the dance on Riley’s behalf — though she’s not sure why Riley asked her, considering she’s never been good at math — and there Farkle is, leading her away into the hallway.

It’s empty because it’s lunchtime, which is perhaps his only saving grace when he says: “I told my dad.”

Maya’s eyes widen and then crinkle at the edges. She’s angry. “You did _what_?” The final sound at the end of the question reverberates throughout the empty space, which startles even her.

“I didn’t know what else to do! If you’re not going to talk about it, I need someone who will.”

Maya is still looking at him as if she wants to tear him apart with her bare hands, so she continues.

 

“I just wanted to help.”

 

Sure he did. Farkle rarely does anything for his friends if not to _help_ ; he’s not a malicious person. But even so, this is precisely the kind of thing Maya wanted to avoid — bringing adults in on this secret so they could judge her with their experience and look down on her childishness.

“You do realize that he’s going to tell _everyone_ now. Your mom, Riley’s parents, _my mom_?” The mere thought makes her want to spontaneously combust.

“He promised he wouldn’t say anything,” Farkle contests, taking a gentle hold of Maya’s forearms in order to steady her.

She realizes she’s been flailing around in a panic and silently thanks him for the grounding. She breathes in and out in even beats, looking for some sort of peace.

“He wants you to be able to tell people on your own terms,” he promises. “And in the meantime, he found you a doctor — one of the best in the city. Someone you can maybe discuss your options with?”

 

 _Options._ She has options to consider. The thought hadn’t even crossed her mind. In her neighborhood, they seemed to be nonexistent; there was just one choice that everyone — including her mother — had to make. After that, there was subsistence, barely keeping afloat.

 

“You know I can’t…” Maya gets quiet because she recognizes the gap between them both and is embarrassed by it. “I can’t afford that. It’s really nice of your dad, but —”

“Don’t worry about it, okay? Do you think he would just make an appointment and leave you hanging on the cost?” Farkle gives the tiniest bit of a smile to comfort her, remind her that she’s speaking to a friend with her best interests at heart.

“I can’t just accept that and not pay him back. It’s not right.”

He takes a deep breath. “ _Maya_ ,” he says with a certain amount of bass in his voice, as if that makes him more authoritative. “You have to let people look out for you every once in a while.”

She averts his gaze though he is intent on looking at her, even lowering his head to find her eyes.

 

“You can’t just decide to be lonely. That’s not how this works.”

 

_What are your friends like?_

_They’re the best people I know._

_Did you grow up with them?_

_Kinda. I’ve known them for almost my entire life, but…_

_But?_

_We don’t exactly exist on the same planets._

 

“I don’t know how to do this.” It occurs to her that she doesn’t know how to do a lot of things — _classic_ Maya — but right on top of the list is learning her way out of loneliness. She recedes because she has no idea what else to do. Even now, after all of these years with Farkle and Riley, she can’t twist herself out of all of her knots.

She’s always told herself that there are things they simply wouldn’t ever be able to understand. _This_ is one of those things, and yet, Farkle won’t shake it away. He’s making a claim to it like it’s his problem to shoulder.

 

“This isn’t your responsibility.”

 

Farkle shrugs. “That’s not really up to you, is it?”

Considering he’s not backing down, she supposes it isn’t. If she’s going to have a monkey on her shoulder, things could be much worse; Farkle is at least unwaveringly loyal and won’t hang her out to dry. Or, at least, she wants to believe in him enough after all these years.

“Do you need someone to go with you? To the appointment, I mean.”

She doesn’t know. _Probably not_ , she wants to say. But she’s never been in this situation, so who is she to make a conjecture?

He doesn’t want her to be lonely, so she just nods. Anything to make him feel better about doing whatever he thinks is his part.

He already knows the truth. What harm could it do?

 

▼

 

Later on, she jots down the date and time for her appointment — the day after the dance — in the planner she got from Riley’s parents for Christmas.

It was empty otherwise, but the reminder is for Farkle’s sake; she doesn’t want to be a no-show and make his father look stupid when he’s gone through the trouble.

Afterwards, she begins doodling, curlicues enveloping themselves around the words as if they’ll make them any less serious. If she could mindlessly draw on these pages and sit on this bench in her school hallway for the rest of her life, she would.

 

“Penny for your thoughts?”

 

At the sound of Riley’s voice, she snaps the planner shut — a little less subtly than she probably should have. She raises her head and discovers that she has Lucas in tow; he’s lightly rocking back and forth on the balls of his feet, clearly trying to rid himself of some feeling of awkwardness.

“I told mom and dad you’d never use that thing,” Riley admits, rolling her eyes. True enough, the gift was simply a feeble attempt to inspire Maya to keep everything in order. Now that Riley mentions her reservations, Maya almost feels embarrassed for being so predictable.

“It was a nice thought,” she replies, shrugging. “And besides, any page is something I can draw on.”

She considers the fact that she hasn’t been to the art studio in a while, save for the occasional art class she attends. Ever since fainting on the way there and ending up in the nurse’s office, she hasn’t even attempted to step foot in the place on her own.

 

( There’s really nothing she feels like painting. The more she isolates herself, the less there is to observe — the less beauty there is in her universe. )

 

“Lucas and I were going to go grab Chinese if you wanted to come with?”

She’s being provided a formal invitation to become their third wheel. Maybe that’s what spurs her, prompts her to speak without thinking —

“He doesn’t like Chinese food.”

Riley raises a brow, whips her head around to face Lucas. Evidently, he hadn’t mentioned it, always too willing to go with the flow. They share a glance, after which he gives a docile nod.

She turns back to Maya then, providing her an equally befuddled reaction.

“Uh, it’s just randomly came up in conversation one day,” she nearly stutters, trying her best to blurt out something that makes sense. “And I just needed to make sure he knew that his food preferences were a crime.”

 

Give or take, they did have that conversation — just not in these hallways.

 

Maya clears her throat to welcome a new topic of discussion, because oh boy, do they need one.

Her eyes move to Lucas. “So, slick, you got a suit yet?”

She tries out the southern drawl she’d put to bed at the start of the semester. It was a joke she’d developed between the two of them when they first met, but it almost seemed too personal to bring out in front of others.

 

( “You do know that no one in Texas sounds like that, right?” Lucas was under a cloud of smoke that was taking it’s time to dissipate when he said this, the weed they’d smoked setting them in a haze. He was half-laughing, half-serious, not quite sure which one to be.

“But that’s what they sound like to me, so it’s here to stay, m’afraid.” Maya snickered, readjusting herself on the wall they were sitting against before turning to him and sneaking her hand up to his cheek, forcing them to keep each others’ gaze. “So, do you have a Butch Cassidy song you can sing this scene out to?” She was smirking, but not doing a very good job of it, oh so tempted to just burst out in giggles.

But it was Lucas who laughed first, completely abandoning any part of him that was insulted. )

 

Lucas gives her a look as if she’s done the strangest thing anyone could ever do, but it doesn’t last very long; Riley’s eyes are on him in a matter of seconds and it’s as if she’s seen a ghost, the joke completely flying over her head — _oops_ , Maya thinks.

 

She hasn’t asked him to the dance yet.

 

“Uh, I’m not sure what I would need a suit for?” He stammers out, but he’s not an idiot.

Riley looks back at Maya, so hopeless that Maya feels the urge to hug her and apologize for having broken some part of the nonexistent _code_ Riley hinted at before.

But instead, she only gets up to take Riley by the shoulders and says: “Like I said, seal the deal.” With that, all of her emotional attachment to the situation is seemingly removed, and she — surprisingly — starts to head to history class.

They’ll follow, obviously, but not until they relinquish all of that awkwardness; Maya is sure that whole process is absolutely, unequivocally none of her business.

 

▼

 

History class is more of a bummer now that Mr. Matthews is on her tail, but he thankfully can’t do anything about the new seating arrangement.

Rather than being next to Riley, Maya has opted to be behind her in order to hide, though intimidating other students to shuffle themselves around her is a bit of a headache. She lies yet again and tells Riley she has to move in case her father wants to peer over her nonexistent homework. Riley is bristly with her, so she doesn’t question it. Fair enough.

Her head bobs beneath Riley’s form for nearly the entire period, right out of plain sight, though not for Mr. Matthews’ lack of trying. To her credit, she now tries to take notes, but usually gives up after ten or fifteen minutes — and this time is no exception.

While he speaks on platitudes completely unrelated to history, she sinks her head into a hand planted on her desk — an action that prompts Farkle to tap her shoulder and mouth _you okay?_ in her direction.

She nods, only pressing further into her hand. She remains that way for a while until a piece of paper is slipped between the triangle of space her outstretched elbow leaves.

Lucas is a few seats behind her, but that doesn’t register until just then; they haven’t interacted in class, so she doesn’t have to keep that in mind.

Still, no one else would have gone through the trouble to send a note down the grapevine, so she braces herself for what it says.

She unfolds it.

 

_You don’t seem that pumped about the dance._

_‘All tomorrow’s parties’, remember?_

 

Then, further down:

 

_Friends?_

 

A real peace offering. She’s not sure what about her forcibly pushing Riley to ask him to the dance compelled him, but regardless, it’s a comfort to her. He’s starting to untangle himself from the anger and sadness he feels.

He’s healing.

 

( It was on their third meeting that Lucas began to wonder why they kept on running into one another. It was pure chance to a certain degree, but they were clearly chasing chaos on the same path — soaking up the same energy.

This was before she ever asked him about what enticed him — perhaps even before she even registered that he was an outsider.

“You’re pretty good at making a home out of this life,” he said, his hands snaking around her waist as the plastic cup in her hands sloshed around.

She brought the cup to her lips, not even taking a moment to wince at the unpleasant taste of whatever cheap alcohol they were serving that night.

“Why, because I’m always here when you want me to be? You think I never leave?” She asked all of this with a glint in her eye, curious.

He just shrugged, suddenly shy — as if any answer would have gotten him in trouble.

“Fine,” she said in response to the silence, pressing her cup into his chest until he reached out to grab it. “Just so you know I’ve actually seen the outside world…”

She took his hand and began to drag him out of the party, all the way down the steps outside of the slumlord building that had been chosen for the night. The groans and swears that emanated from the crowd they’d roughly cut through were of no interest to her, though her aggression and insistence were already making Lucas meek and hesitant.

Once they made their way outside, she relinquished her hold on him and raised an eyebrow.

“You basically asked for this, so no complaints.”

Then, she bum-rushed the nearest fire escape ladder, which was thankfully close enough to the ground that she didn’t look like an idiot when she attempted to capture it. Once her hands had a firm grip, she dragged it downwards for Lucas’ access and began to climb.

“You better not be afraid of heights!” She squeaked, messing with him — though, considering the huge gulp he took from her cup before tossing it in the trash, she assumed she hit the nail cleanly on the head.

To his credit, he did follow her, though at a slower pace than she would have liked. She stilled at the highest point, about ten or so stories up, and promptly looped her legs between the front bars.

The whole thing was a bit rickety considering the building hadn’t been kept up to standard in ages, which probably explained the pale white hue to Lucas’ skin once he finally joined her. She was careful to take his hand to help him into the same position she was in, their legs dangling over the end of the escape beside one another.

Together, they looked over the view now before them — not the prettiest, admittedly, considering all of Alphabet City’s ugliness was on full display, but beyond the low rises sat the easygoing East River. That, at least, looked rather pretty in the moonlight.

“I’m gonna give you a lesson, new guy,” she started once Lucas had sufficient time to take in the view. “And it’s about this neighborhood.”

His hands were still shaky, but his voice came out clear and confident. “Shoot.”

Maya never had to explain this side of herself to anyone; Farkle and Riley knew nothing of it, and everyone else who surrounded her in Alphabet City didn’t require the explanation. It was strange to dissect her life for anyone to hear.

“This is how we belong,” she admitted, and saying it out loud made it seem silly, like each kid in the neighborhood was inducted into some sort of cult when they came of age. “Because this is what we’re expected to do here. This is how we live.”

Lucas nodded. “And you don’t mind that?”

 _Did she?_ “I love being from here. It’s the place that made me _me_. But that doesn’t make me less of a person. I still have a life outside of this. It’s not a life with silver spoons, but it’s still a life.”

He was poking at her deepest insecurities and he didn’t even know it.

“I don’t just drink and get high all day.” In fact, she didn’t do much of either at all, even still. She hadn’t gone out all that often, really — until…

“I don’t just sleep with random, charming guys.” Until she met Lucas.

Lucas scoffed, but he did it with a smile. “Obviously not, because I’m not charming.”

Maya looked at him as if he were an idiot. “Sure you’re not.” He kept smiling in response, the kind of smile that made her insides flutter — and, thankfully, in that she saw an out from the hole she’d dug herself into.

“Just think like us, kid.” One of her fingers reached out to poke him on the nose. “Have all tomorrow’s parties on the brain.”

He wrinkled his nose and began laughing. “Seriously, you’re going to snatch the title of a Lou Reed song? And a fucking depressing one at that?”

Her lips broke out into a toothy grin, after which she began giggling uncontrollably. “It works if you work it, okay?”

It seemed like they laughed for ages, the spell finally broken when she leaned her head in just far enough — and he closed the gap between them fully, capturing her lips. )

 

The remnants of the song play in her head as she scribbles her response on the sheet.

 

( _In what costume shall the poor girl wear to all tomorrow's parties?_

_A hand-me-down dress from who knows where to all tomorrow's parties?_

_And where will she go, and what shall she do when midnight comes around?_

_She'll turn once more to Sunday's clown and cry behind the door._ )

 

 _Sure thing_ , she writes, and then she passes the note behind her.


	7. seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Long time no see? ;) As some of you may already know, I like to stay a chapter ahead with this fic. The next chapter had some difficult interludes, which left me at a block for a while. BUT I've finally gotten to the finish line!
> 
> Regardless, here's hoping you enjoy this one. c:

The hallways are decorated with what seems to be infinite rolls of tinsel and metallic snowflakes when Maya arrives to school with Riley in tow on the day of the dance. She wants to grunt — maybe even scream — but Riley is thrilled at the sight of it.

Maya is once again reminded that in just a few hours Lucas and Riley will be going on their first honest to god date, after which things will probably unfold exactly as she thought they would.

She wants to crawl into a hole, but hiding in her apartment for the entirety of the night will do.

“I probably never would have asked him if it weren’t for your little push,” Riley mentions, clearly walking on air as her hands graze across all of the glittery fanfare while they make their way to their lockers. “So thank you — seriously. And I’m sorry if I was a little ungrateful to begin with.”

After Maya insisted that they have a conversation about the dance, Riley didn’t speak to her for the rest of the day — and, honestly, Maya thought that was reasonable.

Her pushiness was coarse, as it needed to be, but Riley never did well with anyone being overly brash. Even her.

“Don’t worry about it,” Maya replies, because there are far bigger things to worry about. “I know how you get when I don’t hold my tongue, or whatever.”

Riley shrugs. “It’s in the past, right?” By then, they reach their lockers, and her gaze trains on the knob so she can get through the combination. Still, she continues speaking. “You’re coming over to get ready, right? I still haven’t seen your dress.”

Maya had passed by a thrift store in the East Village while out and about the day before and spotted a violet dress in the window. The dress nearly tempted her into attending the dance simply for the sake of wearing it — before she remembered that purple was Riley’s color, and now that they had a code, it was probably best to leave it alone.

“I told my mother I would help her at the diner. She’s working overtime and they’re short on hands tonight.” Maya uses her own locker combination as an excuse to avoid Riley’s incredulous expression. “I won’t make it to your house, but I’ll get to the dance on time. It’ll be fine.”

The lie occurs to her at that moment, and she’s at least thankful to have an excuse for when she doesn’t come.

 

_Things at the diner got too busy, sorry. There’ll be plenty of other dances. And I’m sure you and Lucas had a great time without me anyway._

 

“I’m holding you to that, Oh My Maya.” It’s a stupid nickname that Riley brings into conversation when she feels the need to remind Maya of all the years they have between them.

Once, when she was young, she and Riley made a massacre of the Matthews kitchen ( thanks to her influence, _of course_ ) — and when Maya’s mother arrived to pick her up, the statement fell out of her mouth as if they were two children on _Leave It to Beaver_.

It was so absurd then — and it’s still absurd now, to the point that Maya can’t help but smile every time she hears it.

Once her smile comes out, she turns her attention away from her open locker and to Riley, holding out a hand that she can grip tightly. “You got it, Rah Rah Riley.”

One day, Riley will make it onto the cheerleading squad and be the popular girl with an athlete on her arm. Her nickname won’t be funny anymore — just a prophecy.

 

Maya’s nickname will always be both.

 

▼

 

“There’s something super strange about you coming prepared for these kinds of things. I just thought I’d let you know.”

She says this as she’s furiously brushing her teeth in the girls’ bathroom with Farkle beside her, mindlessly playing with the faucet knobs at the other sink. Usually, he would guard the door, but now that he’s somehow developed some full-proof plan to keep their peers away ( Maya doesn’t ask for specifics ), he seems completely unconcerned.

“It’s not like you’re going to come prepared,” he retorts, finally leaving the faucet in front of him alone, both knobs at full blast. “So someone else has to take over the job.”

Maya shrugs, rolls her eyes, and continues brushing, her gums beginning to ache.

 

“Can I ask you something?”

 

She spits out what she has in her mouth before answering. “Shoot.”

Farkle pauses, as if he knows this could have some sort of disastrous consequence. All the while, Maya is still brushing for some bizarre reason.

 

“Did you tell Lucas?”

 

Her hand drops away, leaving her toothbrush firmly lodged in her mouth between her molars. She sharply turns to him. “Tell him _what_?”

Farkle knows how to read people, but he can’t be that clued in — Maya is sure of it, or she at least wants to convince herself that she is.

“You know, about this.” Farkle has now stuffed his hands into his pockets, seemingly feeling awkward.

“Why would I?”

If he isn’t going to speak in specifics, Maya is going to deny, deny, _deny_ until Farkle gets to the point of things.

“I don’t know. You guys seem like you have a good thing going. You’re friends, right?”

Sure, if Lucas’ proposition is to be believed. But that’s beside the point.

“Okay, and Riley and I are _best_ friends — and she obviously doesn’t know.”

Farkle scoffs like he’s been called an idiot. “Well, of course. Telling Riley is a different story. But he’s in our friend group now and he’s harmless. There’s much less to worry about if you spill your guts out to him. So I thought that maybe…” He holds his hands in surrender. “Sorry, my bad. I’m not saying you have to tell him anything. I just thought you might have.”

Maya finally yanks the toothbrush out of her mouth and runs it under the sink, traces of blood from having brushed too aggressively running in circular motions down the drain.

She doesn’t know why she feels so stifled; Farkle clearly isn’t aware of anything beyond his innocent assumptions about their relationship, and so long as she keeps things between her and Lucas, she’s in no danger of being found out.

 

But still, the air feels like it’s got her in a chokehold.

 

“You’re the only one with this grand secret,” she snarks, turning all of the faucet water off in one fell swoop. “So you should feel honored, I guess.”

Farkle smiles, always charmed by Maya’s smart mouth — even if she doesn’t entirely understand why.

 

“I do,” he says, and then he reaches out his hand for her to grab as she had done with Riley just that morning.

 

She presses her lips together, attempting to subdue her heartfelt reaction. She takes his hand.

 

▼

 

During lunch, Riley is on a different sort of uppers. She’s last to the table, speeding towards the three of them with intent.

“I’m having a dress-mergency,” she confesses, buzzing with anxiety. Her knees are even quaking. “And I may have stuffed all of my options into my backpack this morning.” Her eyes zero in on Maya before she points at her. “You. I need your help.”

Maya is mid-chew when Riley summons her, and somehow nothing is less appealing than the prospect of indulging this particular crisis. Lucas is warily watching her, as far as she can tell; he hovers in her periphery from across the table, but she doesn’t want to fully look at him.

“Maybe it’s best that we surprise each other at the dance,” she offers after swallowing hard. “Um, y’know — since you won’t see my dress until the dance.”

Riley considers for a moment, then pouts. “Who else is supposed to get me through this, then?” She begins chewing her lip, her eyes darting to Lucas. “Isn’t it bad luck for your date to see your dress before the fact?”

 

Maya’s stomach turns.

 

“I think that’s only for weddings, Riles,” Farkle pipes up.

Maya lights up like a Christmas tree then, her finger pointing in Farkle’s direction. “There you go. He knows the dress rules. He can definitely help you.”

Farkle turns himself completely towards Maya so no one else can see his expression. He narrows his eyes. _You owe me_ , he says, and she gives him the best apologetic look she can muster.

Regardless, Farkle leaves the table and joins Riley on her mission without any further complaint.

 

Which leaves Maya alone with Lucas.

 _Oops._ She didn’t entirely think this through.

 

Well, she can’t ignore him now, so her gaze trains itself onto him as he awkwardly pokes at his food.

“Hey,” he manages, though it’s half-hearted and without confidence.

“Hi,” she says back, equally encumbered. “Excited for the dance?”

He nods. “Sure. Should be fun, right? Riley’s really excited, obviously.” He chances a small laugh.

Maya laughs with him, but it’s disingenuous and she can’t manage to make it sound just right. His expression falters once he notices, so he changes the subject.

 

“Do you have a date?”

 

It’s the sort of question he’s not allowed to ask anymore, given their current situation. Maya doesn’t want to answer because she’d be complicit in this teenage crime he’s trying to commit; it would feel like she’s betraying Riley, and she’s tried so hard to avoid those minefields.

So instead, she replies: “I’m not going.”

Lucas furrows his brow. “But you just said —“

“I know what I said to Riley,” she interjects. “But I’m not going.”

It’s tense then, because Lucas wants to continue asking questions if his expression is anything to go by. Maya’s responses are so terse that he’s presumably considering whether it’s worth pushing forward.

“I just don’t feel like going,” she adds, solving his problem. “I’ve never been into school dances.”

And yet, she’s been to all of them up to this point. They were all disastrous to some degree, made a mess by Maya’s dates — but Riley always, _always_ came through for her, providing a hand to hold as the boys tethered to Maya stumbled around in drunken stupors or otherwise embarrassing states.

“You and Riley are going to have a great time,” she chances, because he’s still not speaking and it’s driving her a bit mad. Instead, he’s busying himself with drinking his soda, giving himself an excuse not to provide his side of the discussion. “She won’t even notice I’m not there. You’ll see.”

Lucas sets his soda down and continues picking at his food. “I’m sure you’re right.” His eyes are trained downward, surely avoiding hers.

 

Maya hopes he’s disappointed for a fraction of a second, but then she tucks that feeling away and scolds herself.

 

▼

 

( “Can I see you again?” He asked afterwards, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear.

The intonation to his voice, the slight accent — it gave her the impression that he wasn’t from here, so he didn’t know how things worked.

“I don’t think you get it,” she voices, though her voice died somewhere towards the end when she noticed the sincerity in his expression.

“What am I supposed to get?” He was confused, searching for clarity in her eyes. “You don’t want to see me?”

She suddenly became acutely aware of how messily assembled they were on this mattress that wasn’t theirs — and probably was a popular destination for plenty of non-couples just like them who were in the mood to make questionable decisions.

But he seemed so sure that this wasn’t questionable at all — that he meant it, and would mean it still in the morning light, when the party atmosphere had dissipated.

“I’ll be around,” she finally said, her hands tentatively grazing his forearm, then his chest — traveling around to remind herself that he was real, and this was real, and it felt right.

“Just keep coming back.”

She wasn’t sure if she was saying it more for his benefit or hers, asking that he drift further towards her and away from everything else. )

 

▼

 

She wanders around the East Village after school in case Riley insists on calling and checking in.

The area is bustling with young people, as per usual, bleary-eyed and stumbling around like they’re not built for mid-afternoons — only nighttime, when their flaws are remarkably less obvious.

Maya tries not to focus on them for her own sake, narrowly avoiding their figures as she makes her way through the maze of crowded streets.

She’s not sure why she makes the turn towards that thrift store she abandoned yesterday, but she does — and there that purple dress is with all its trimmings, as pretty as ever.

She stands before the window and rocks back and forth on her feet, considering which is worse — venturing into the store or heading home, where the phone may be ringing off the hook.

She supposes it’s the latter and heads inside, but even her own mind curses her for assuming things just for the sake of giving herself what she wants.

 

“Are you looking for something?”

 

A wary attendant who is guarding the door asks immediately. Maya concludes that they must have thieves shuffling through the place all the time, and she definitely looks no different from the usual neighborhood fare.

“I’d like to try on the dress in the window, please,” she says with more confidence than she assumed she had in her — and to the employee’s credit, she obliges, though not without some concern etched in her face.

 

Minutes later, Maya is slipping into the thing, anxious for it to fit, if only for the sake of something _working out_ — even if it’s just something this simple.

 

The mirror perched in the dressing room is from ceiling to floor, giving her proper view of every angle. Once the dress is on, she freezes before it, positively shocked.

The purple seems deeper against her skin, the fabric snug to her every curve all the way upwards to a high halter, almost like a turtleneck. She smiles, thinking of Farkle — who wore nothing but turtlenecks until ninth grade, when Maya forced him into some vintage band t-shirts and told him it was time to grow up. It was rude, obviously, but he still took it to heart, always receptive to whatever she had to say.

 

The dress is perfect. She has nowhere to wear it.

 

( _It probably won’t even fit me soon_ , she admits to herself, but she hushes it away. }

 

She buys it anyway — with a busted up Walkman with duct tape around its edges and some cassettes to boot — and uses up nearly all of her monthly allowance. Then, she asks for a job application.

 

▼

 

By the time she gets back to Alphabet City, the sun has completely set and the air is blistering. She shivers in the winter cold, her hands aching as they grip the handle of the bag she was given at the store for dear life.

On her way through Avenue C, a storeowner beckons her. Maya smiles because she feels compelled to; the storeowner knows her mother well, and beyond that, she’s heard the stories. She remembers spending time in Tompkins Square Park with the neighborhood kids during her childhood, the woman’s daughter included.

That was long before she became an addict who couldn’t be saved — a product of being misunderstood and being told that her perceived value was near worthless. She went to NYU and flunked out because the classes were too difficult. Her parents did what they could, but it wasn’t enough. It wasn’t ever going to be enough.

 

Maya smiles enough for the both of them.

 

“Buena suerte, Maya,” she says after handing over a bag with ingredients for dinner. “Y buena salud.”

 

She leaves shortly thereafter, blaming her watery eyes on the cold.

 

▼

 

After cooking and eating dinner for one ( her mother is actually working overtime, thankfully ), she settles into her bedroom for the night — closing her window to block out the sounds from the streets, which are beginning to bustle with the sound of youthful ignorance.

She hangs her new dress in the closet and begins to fiddle with her new Walkman, pressing one of the cassettes into the inside and placing the headphones over her ears. All is blocked out for a while, until —

Her phone rings.

She jumps up from her mattress, startled. Who could be calling? The digital clock on her nightstand says it’s nearly ten — the dance started long ago, so Riley must be settled already. Unless…

She walks over to the phone and shakily grabs the receiver.

“Hello?”

It’s quiet for a while in the foreground, save for some rustling. In the distance, though, Maya can hear some yelling — and then a slammed door.

 

This isn’t Riley.

 

“Maya?”

His voice comes in clear and true, and Maya can’t recall a time when she’s felt so properly _fucked_.

“You’re supposed to be at the dance,” she says quietly, already turning inward and blaming herself for his flakiness. She didn’t push him hard enough, didn’t convince him well enough, didn’t —

“I couldn’t go.”

Maya sighs loudly, internally begging some sort of deity to sort this out for her.

“Not because of Riley,” he amends, his voice just as tentative. “My family is just — this night has been a mess.”

 

There’s a pang in her chest that’s borne of this incessant need to protect him as he would her, and it won’t go away — so she doesn’t try very hard to stomp it out.

 

“I’m sorry,” she replies, and she’s not sure if it’s because of her assumption that it was about her or because she can’t do anything to help. It’s probably both.

“Could have been worse,” he musters, though he already sounds far away.

“Hey —“ she starts, immediately desperate to keep him grounded on earth. “How the hell did you get this number?”

Lucas makes a sound that she can’t quite identify, but then, after a pause, he’s laughing — and she’s relieved.

“The Yellow Pages exist, Maya,” he retorts through some leftover chuckles.

“Yeah, well, stalkers tend to use the Yellow Pages as their excuse.” She’s laughing too, and it feels nice — almost too nice.

Eventually, they’ll both have to explain themselves to Riley — who is probably at the dance alone wondering what she did wrong. Maya hurts for her as she does Lucas, but there’s nothing to be done about it right now. Not while Lucas is on the phone. Not when he’s sought her out for support.

When it’s Riley’s turn, it’ll be Riley’s turn. She won’t be thinking about Lucas then, just as Riley deserves.

 

“Can you just stay on the line with me?”

 

He inquires once the laughter has subsided and they’re just breathing into their receivers. The background noise on his end has subsided, but Maya still feels uneasy, waiting for it to kick up again.

“Of course,” she obliges, settling in against the wall — before realizing that there’s something she can do. She looks towards her mattress, where her Walkman and cassettes lay.

“I’ll be right back,” she says before dashing over to grab everything, switching out cassettes before bringing the receiver back to her ear.

“Just listen,” she requests, and then she moves the receiver away to press a headphone against it.

 

She presses play, and Lou Reed begins to bellow into Lucas’ ears.


	8. eight

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We were all dragged by Ski Lodge Part 2. Consider this my formal apology. :x

Lucas eventually falls asleep while on the phone with her, the sounds of the songs she decided to play lulling him into it. She takes a moment to listen to his even breathing before deciding that she’s intruding and pressing her receiver back into its holder.

 

( She’s allowed to know him when he asks her to. Not always. Never always. )

 

For a while, she lays in bed and just listens to all the tapes she’s bought, staring up at the ceiling until her vision blurs and she supposes that there are stars strewn across it.

Her mother arrives sometime after the sun comes up, as always, and Maya realizes that she hasn’t slept at all. She has to meet Farkle in a couple hours, so there’s no chance to sleep now — and besides, she somehow doesn’t feel tired. She isn’t thinking. She isn’t doing much at all.

At least, that’s the case until her mother tiptoes into her bedroom, assuming she’s asleep; then, once she discovers Maya isn’t at all, she crosses her arms as if she’s awaiting some sort of explanation.

“I just wasn’t tired,” Maya says, because what other explanation can she give?

“Do you really think that’s what I’m worried about?”

Maya lifts herself off her mattress by her elbows, her heart suddenly pounding twice as hard. “What’s going on?”

 

_She can’t know. She can’t know. She can’t —_

 

“Riley came by the diner last night.”

Somehow, Maya thinks that she feels worse than she would have had the conversation taken the turn she most feared.

“In a pretty little dress, wondering where her best friend Maya was.” Katy raises an eyebrow. “Because her best friend Maya told her that she’d be helping out at the diner.”

Maya is fully sitting up now, rubbing at her temples in an attempt to figure out how the hell she’s going to fix this. “Did you cover for me?”

Katy sighs. “I did what I could, but Riley isn’t as clueless as you’d like her to be. She was upset when she left, and I don’t blame her.”

Maya doesn’t blame her either — only blames herself.

“Why would you lie to her?” When her mother takes the time to sound disappointed, Maya knows she’s _truly_ fucked up. “That girl probably hasn’t lied to you a day in her life, and here you are yanking her chain.”

Maya knows now that lying about the dance was a terrible idea. She should have known before she even did it in the first place; of course Riley was going to make sure that she didn’t blow her off.

 

Riley didn’t even call. She’s definitely upset. Or sad. Or probably both.

 

“I didn’t want to go and it seemed like a good idea at the time,” Maya replies, though she’s not sure why she’s fully explaining herself to her mother. It’s not like Katy asked for a laundry list of excuses. “I don’t like hurting Riley. So maybe I just put it off as long as I can.”

Katy scoffs, incredulous. “You have to know that doesn’t mean she hurts any less. It probably just hurts _worse_.”

Most of the time, Maya and her mother speak to each other as if they’re friends and not mother and daughter. It’s something Maya has gotten used to; Riley won’t ever be as combative, and she needs someone to tell her when she’s crossed the line. That doesn’t mean the scolding doesn’t sting, if her blush is anything to go by.

“The Matthews are the best people you’ve got in your life, Maya.”

 

( Another thing: her mother openly insults herself for the sake of elevating the Matthews, the people she truly believes will save Maya from becoming her in the end.

Maya always wants to stop her and provide some assurance — that she is the most important person in her life and nothing will ever change that.

But Katy wouldn’t ever believe her anyway. )

 

“You can’t take them for granted, baby girl.” Katy’s tone is much more amiable now. “You have to fix this.”

 

And fix it she will. Just not right now, when she has no clue as to how to make it better.

 

▼

 

“She hates me,” Maya insists once she meets Farkle on the Upper East Side for her appointment. “She hates me and she has every right to.”

Farkle is unmoved by her assertion. “Riley doesn’t have it in her to hate anyone, but especially not you.”

 

( Someone can spit in Riley’s face and she’d smile through it and insist they were having a bad day.

But that’s only so because she has people she can count on to treat her right — Maya being at the top of that list.

Riley isn’t for everyone, which Maya can hardly believe; she is _too_ nice and _too_ affable for some people who don’t know what to do with all of her goodness.

Maya can’t believe it, but Riley sure can. Sometimes, she holds onto her friends for dear life, afraid she’ll lose them.

It is the one insecurity of Riley’s that Maya is familiar with, so she assumes it’s her only one — and since it is, it is so deep and pervasive that nothing will shake it from her.

When a friend betrays her, Riley takes it so deep to heart that it may very well cut.

But Maya still tests the boundaries anyway, because that’s what Maya does. Because Maya convinces herself that there’s no avoiding it.

Because she convinces herself that she’ll never be as good and affable as Riley.

Even if she spends her whole life trying to keep Riley happy. )

 

“There’s a first time for everything,” Maya grumbles, her hands clutching the hot chocolate Farkle insisted be bought on his father’s dime for dear life. “ _Anyway_ , it’s freezing, isn’t it?”

Farkle is noticeably unimpressed with the change in subject. “ _Anyway_ , are you ready for this?”

By _this_ , he obviously means the appointment.

“Ready for what?”

That doesn’t mean she can’t pretend to be obtuse.

 

▼

 

She disassociates while sitting on the medical table beside Farkle, her mind floating outside of her body somewhere.

 _I thought this would be like the movies_ , she thinks. _Gel on the stomach and all that._

Instead, the doctor takes her blood, and she only stares as it swirls down into the test tube. Farkle is gripping her hand so tightly that it’s numbed, she vaguely realizes, and she supposes it’s because he must think she doesn’t do well with pain.

_How long does this take?_

He squeezes her hand. She pities him; her palms are sweating.

The doctor says she’s perfectly healthy and all is well, but the words float out and dissipate into the atmosphere the moment they enter her ears.

 

And then: _I wonder how my mom must have felt._

 

( Katy Hart was sixteen when her daughter Maya came into the world.

Her boyfriend became her husband for a short while, once she decided that a hurried city hall ceremony was in order. He left when Maya was three.

“We’ll see each other all the time,” he promised his little girl. By year’s end, he was married to someone else and lived five hours upstate. He took the distance as an opportunity to pretend as if he lived on another planet.

He was no longer the seventeen-year-old boy who seemingly committed himself to relinquishing his childhood for his daughter’s sake. He didn’t give up anything at all. But his ex-wife did — his frazzled, not at all put together ex-wife who still managed to _stay_.

Who loved her daughter in her own way, on her own time. Regardless, it was a wonder she loved Maya at all considering the odds stacked up against them both.

Even still, Katy will remark every now and then that she is astounded her daughter is alive and well and _breathing_ ; she remembers the oxygen that needed to be puffed into her little, premature lungs.

She cost an arm and a leg from day one. The incubator wasn’t cheap. But here Maya was indeed, in one piece and with her own struggles to contend with.

There were few ways more terrible to repay her mother. )

 

The pamphlets that fill her small, _childlike_ hands are blurred in her vision, mountains of text that she can’t manage to decipher right then and there.

“You have time,” the doctor insists, but it sounds about as genuine as her father’s promise once it travels through her ears. “You don’t need to decide right now.”

Her fingers curl over the stapled edges of all the papers stacked in her hands, the lines making an imprint into the tips.

 

Even if it isn’t a lie — even if she doesn’t have to decide right now — she has to decide eventually. The worries won’t evaporate themselves.

 

So, there on that table next to Farkle, she buries her head into his shoulder, closes her eyes, and hopes that when she opens them, she’ll have become someone else.

 

▼

 

On the way out, a nurse takes Farkle aside for a private discussion, but she isn’t far enough away.

“Take care of your girlfriend, won’t you? She needs your support.”

She holds one of his hands between both of her own, and Maya remembers where she is — this place full of people who offer reassuring hand holds through situations out of the ordinary, and not the place she knows where her circumstances are perfectly _normal_.

She keeps her gaze averted, but she imagines that Farkle smiles and nods through it; at least, she doesn’t hear him protest, which is just like him. He rejoins her without a single comment, and out they go into the world again.

She wants to apologize for forcing him to become a victim of mistaken identity, but that requires more than she can offer.

 

_I’m sorry they all think you’re the ­—_

 

And then: her thought process shuts down entirely.

“Thanks for coming,” she mumbles instead as she’s stuffing the pamphlets into the backpack she’s brought with her.

“Anytime,” he replies, and she knows he means it. His eyes are trained on the pamphlets she’s desperately trying to hide, as she should have expected.

“I promise I’ll read them,” she offers in response to his nervousness. She will, she guesses, when she can’t manage to avoid doing it anymore. “They’re just not light subway reading.”

Another light bulb goes off in her head. She has to go home now, far away from Farkle’s dream state of a neighborhood and back into a domain she understands, with her mother’s tired eyes and everyone else’s weary souls.

“You’re heading back already?”

She shrugs, made uncomfortable by the idea of sticking around any longer. “There’s nothing else for me to do, right?”

He sighs for a moment, but presses his lips together to contain the sound before he can sound overly dramatic. “We can have some lunch — sit down and talk for a little while.”

 

She can practically see a huge red X cross itself over his form. _No way._

 

“The no talking rule is still in effect,” she retorts sternly, adjusting her backpack on her shoulder and maintaining a hard grip on the strap. This is her _I’m getting the hell out of here_ stance.

“Maya, I’m just trying to understand,” Farkle pleads, stepping forward to gently remove the bag from her shoulder so he can carry it himself — ever the gentleman, and not at all the type who should be mistaken as the —

“There’s nothing to understand. The story is simple and we all know how it ends. Just drop it.” She snatches her bag back immediately, which inevitably makes her feel awful once she sees the hurt cross Farkle’s expression.

 

“How can it be a simple story when it hasn’t even been written yet?”

 

His voice is soft and feeble, as if he’s expecting the words to be shoved back down his throat. “How are you always putting yourself on the losing side of every battle before you even fight it?”

 

( Katy Hart had fierce aspirations of becoming an actress. In a post _A Chorus Line_ New York City, where ordinary stories about ordinary people could burst forth and become _everyone’s_ stories, anything was possible.

Or so she believed. Then she got pregnant.

Maya’s stomach was filled thanks to her mother’s oil-stained diner uniform.

One of her first distinct memories was of her parents standing in front of a trashcan, the expensive, glossy headshots her mother had taken in high school thrown into it.

They’d been arguing; that was the result.

A lit match was strewn atop them, but even now, she can’t remember who threw it. )

 

Maya was holding tightly to her bag now, keeping it flush against her chest as if it were armor.

“What happens when I say it, huh?” Her voice was just as meek, just as shallow. “What happens when I talk about it? We find some way for me to win? Because I know how the story ends, even if it hasn’t happened to me yet. I’ve seen it happen to other people.”

 

( Katy Hart could have ruled the stage.

She could have fallen in love with the right boy.

But instead, she got her daughter Maya.

That’s how the story has always gone in Maya’s eyes. )

 

“Just let me go, Farkle.” She’s begging with him, her voice broken and cracked and _bleeding_ — but she doesn’t want to cry. She can’t.

To his credit, he lets her go.

She calmly walks down the subway steps, goes through the turnstile, takes her seat in a car once the subway finally arrives.

Farkle sits a person away.

 

He lets her go, but he doesn’t leave.

 

She remembers she grabbed her sketchbook before leaving the apartment. She takes it out and begins vaguely tracing an outline of a boy and a girl standing under constellations.

It’s the first time she’s sketched out anything outside of art class in weeks.

 

▼

 

They do grab lunch once Maya concludes that Farkle isn’t going anywhere and it’s best to stay with him rather than leave him to his clueless devices in her neighborhood.

She plucks out fries from his plate and begins the conversation, asking him about the girl he took to the dance — Isadora Smackle, who by all accounts is smarter than him, and who he adores all the more for it — and, eventually, how Riley seemed.

“I can’t lie to you,” he admits, purposefully distracting himself with cutting his burger into quarters — a habit Maya will never understand — to give him decent pause before finishing his confession. “She seemed pretty down. I tried my best, but —”

“You’re only one person.”

Granted, Farkle is the best _one person_ who could have been there for her, but there’s only so much damage control he can dole out.

 

“She’ll forgive you. She’s Riley.”

It’s another thing she adds to the list of promises she can’t entirely believe.

 

“It’s like I can’t be both things at the same time.” Her mouth moves faster than her mind can think, but then again, it’s something she has to admit to someone before she explodes.

“What do you mean?”

She sighs, her hand slipping away from Farkle’s plate and safely back to her side of the table.

 

“I can’t be Maya, Riley’s best friend and Maya, the girl who’s heading down a path completely opposite of Riley. It doesn’t make any sense.”

 

Farkle shrugs like a huge confession _hasn’t_ fallen out of her mouth — like she’s just said some ordinary thing that he can wave away. “Maybe you just don’t give Riley enough credit.”

Maya’s jaw tightens. “I’m not saying Riley isn’t an understanding person, or that she won’t try to _get it_ —”

“But she won’t get it even if she tries, right?” He stops her. “That’s what you’re saying.”

This whole _ordeal_ is in a language Riley won’t ever fully understand, and Maya is desperately hoping to keep it that way. Riley will hold her hand, smile, say she’ll be there through thick and thin — but they’ll drift apart because of the space Maya’s new responsibilities and struggles will leave between them. It’s an inevitability.

 

( Her mother and father could have survived if it weren’t for her, she thinks.

Now, she understands that her dad is a terrible person — but even so, Katy only discovered that when he transformed from irresponsible teenage boy into unwilling father.

Once there were actual stakes, the distance was too much to bear. His failures were too much to forgive. )

 

“She has different things to worry about. Easier things.”

 _Just as she deserves_. She has winter dances and innocent dates with boys and nights tucked safely in bed, away from rowdy crowds.

“Ever think you wouldn’t be headed on opposite paths?” Farkle’s brows are bunched together now; he is both concerned and confused, an odd combination. “Riley would do anything for you. She’d walk with you.”

Maya would do anything for her — including pushing her away and back in the other direction.

“I’d walk with you. You’re Maya. You deserve it.”

 

( When they were in middle school, Maya was convinced that Farkle was in love with her in a way that would stick for the rest of their lives, and it terrified her. Beyond the fact that she wasn’t interested, he was pure in the way that Riley was, and she didn’t know what to do with that.

“You deserve the world,” he said to her one day, and she balked before going on a tirade, insisting that he needed to look elsewhere.

“I’ll love you for the rest of my life, even if it’s not like that,” he let out after a long pause. “And you still deserve the world.”

And that’s how things always were between them. )

 

“I know you would,” she replies. _I just don’t know if I deserve it._

“And I will,” he insists, as if he heard the unspoken part of her response.

 

Some time passes as they eat in silence.

 

“I’m sorry they all thought you were the —”

“That’s okay.” He doesn’t even force her to get the last word out once he hears her throat close up. “There are much worse things I could be.”

 

▼

 

“You weren’t there.”

Riley sounds sad and tired and _depleted_. Maya is very rarely the cause of such strife, and her heart aches for having done her best friend in so badly.

“I don’t understand why you lied, Maya.”

 

( Riley has always loved dances. She loves the pretty dresses and the pretty boys, the pretty decorations and the pretty music. They leave her in a trance, as if she’s living a dream she’s had overnight in real life.

She loves the traditionalism and the romanticism. She loves the fairytale of it all.

Maya dressed up Prince Charming just for this occasion. She just couldn’t play sidekick beyond that.

And somehow, the prince went up in smoke too. He called someone else instead.

She’s failed her best friend in the worst way. Riley dreams dreams, and Maya should not be the one to take that ability from her. )

 

“I can explain —”

“Don’t bother,” Riley interjects, and Maya isn’t sure if she’s thankful for not being forced to come up with yet another lie or crushed because Riley is mad enough to force her mouth shut. “Not right now.”

Riley can’t say anything too definitive, so the _not right now_ was a given. But it doesn’t make the freeze out hurt any less.

 

“ _You weren’t there._ ”

 

She wasn’t. She couldn’t be. She was selfish and chose to hurt Riley over hurting herself, as she believes she’s prone to doing when provided the choice.

“He wasn’t there either.”

Even the one thing Maya was trying to give her as an apology wasn’t working out as she’d hoped; that piece of happiness was being ground into dust with every conversation in an empty hallway, every song she played him over the phone.

She had to try harder. She had to push him out and _away_.

“I’m sure he has a better explanation than me.”

Maya can hear Riley’s shaky breathing on the other side.

She knows what Riley is thinking.

 

_What did I do wrong?_

Maya wants to shout _nothing, nothing, nothing_ until she can’t say it again, even once for the rest of her life.

_It’s me who did everything wrong._

“I have to go,” Riley says, and the line goes dead before Maya even offers a goodbye.

 

She opens her backpack and snatches her sketchbook out of it. From there, she rips the drawing she’d started on the subway into pieces.

She grabs the pamphlets one by one and splays them across her mattress, staring at them all — but not reading them.

Not yet.


	9. nine

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In honor of this fic somehow reaching 2000 hits (??????), I went to the mat and finished chapter ten this morning so I could post this one. Thank you for reading this and coming along on the ride with me. All of your comments have been lovely and insightful and I'm super super grateful. Keep them coming!
> 
> And follow me on Tumblr @mxyaharts if you'd like to pester me in the hopes that next chapter won't take another month, lol.

It’s Farkle who calls on the day Maya has to survive afterwards — the one in between her appointment and school, where the dust will settle and she may actually lose her mind.

“We should hang out more often.”

Maya snorts. “Farkle, we’re practically attached at the hip.”

This has always been true for as long as she’s known him, but especially now that he’s chosen to shoulder this with her without her asking. It’s a choice that makes him both heroic and the sort of person who she feels honored to know — and that inevitably has made her feel a touch more clingy, though she was sure that would have him running soon enough.

Though, apparently, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

“I mean around your side of the tracks.”

 _Oh._ Well, that’s an entirely different ballgame. If anything, that fact is clearly brought to light by his calling Alphabet City _her side of the tracks_ — like it’s some mysterious, messy place he’s entirely removed from and not a mere subway ride away.

“Why, so I can show off? There isn’t much to a grand tour. Here’s where the homeless people sleep, there are the dope fiends, these are the memorials —”

“I get it,” he says abruptly, and the forcefulness of it actually compels her to close her mouth.

She doesn’t say anything else.

“This is where you’re supposed to say I don’t get it.”

She shrugs as if he can see her. “You don’t. But saying that sort of thing to you is like talking to a brick wall.”

He laughs as if it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard, his breath growing shallow and haggard — though she thinks this has more to do with the fact that he feels awkward now and not that what she said was _actually_ funny.

Farkle takes a few moments to calm once his laughter has subsided, and it doesn’t help that Maya wasn’t laughing along with him. He clears his throat and tries a different approach.

“I don’t get it, Maya. But I want to.”

Does he really? He definitely does in theory, but Maya is certain that he’s not ready for the reality of it. And, besides, she’s not ready for the reality of showing him _everything_ and revealing this part of herself that’s been so easy to hide — because he and Riley never asked.

“Are you saying you feel like you don’t know me enough? We’ve been best friends for practically all our lives.”

Farkle scoffs. “Now you’re just putting words in my mouth.”

She is, and she knows it. But it’s easier to deflect than to tackle this sort of thing.

“Then enlighten me. What is it that you’re trying to get that you don’t think you do already?”

Farkle pauses and considers the question, as if he doesn’t have a prepared response for everything catalogued in his head.

“I actually have no idea. And I think that’s fucked up — don’t you?”

Farkle rarely ever curses. He considers swearing _unnecessary_ and _unhelpful_ , as he explained to Maya when she asked in seventh grade.

“Maya, we never even visit because our parents say that it’s _dangerous_ and not the kind of place we should be. But you’re one of my favorite people in the world, and you come from there — and we’ve never even wondered if we were missing out on a ton of your life because we listened to our parents and never even bothered to listen to you.”

She understands where he’s coming from now. This thing that’s between them right now — it’s manifested from a bunch of secrets as he sees it, and he has to unravel them to understand why she’s retreated into a shell and refused to come out.

 

He has to know why it’s even come to this in the first place.

 

Now that he’s pointed out that he can’t connect these dots, it does hurt. They love each other as best friends should, but they don’t know each other as best friends do.

“It’s not like I visit you.”

She doesn’t. Farkle’s father is many things that his son is — astute, observant, straightforward — but the way they manifest in him terrifies Maya. She swears that Mr. Minkus considers her the scruff girl that never should have become friends with the rich genius he’s raised in the first place, though she’d never voice that to Farkle. And she’s only doubled down on that assertion now that he knows just what kind of trouble she’s getting into these days.

The Upper East Side is more mythical than real to her, just as Alphabet City is shrouded for Farkle; they’ve met in Riley’s middle ground of Greenwich Village for as long as they’ve known each other — the sort of place where bohemia and uptown values tenuously mix and muddle until uptown inevitably wins.

“My neighborhood doesn’t even have anything to offer me, so it’s not like you’re hurting my feelings.”

Her mother once called the Upper East Side _the place where individuality goes to die_. Once upon a time, Maya just assumed that statement was out of pure jealousy, but as the years have worn on her, she’s realized that it’s true; everyone there is cookie-cutter, privileged out of their asses with more privilege as their endgame.

Farkle has become the solitary exception in her mind, this boy with a heart of gold who doesn’t need her as a hanger-on. But there they are, on the phone with one another, and he isn’t going anywhere.

“I don’t think you’re ready.”

 

_I’m definitely not ready._

 

“One day, then,” he says wistfully after a few seconds, as if seeing the nitty-gritty of it all is something worth dreaming about.

Maya only wishes she could romanticize things in the way that he does. She loves Alphabet City, but she knows Riley and Farkle would only insist that she loves it for _all the wrong reasons_.

 

▼

 

_Took a double shift._

 

Her mother’s notes are never laced with sweet words or pet names; they get straight to the point. Maya never minds because such things are unnecessary with them, but on this particular morning, some part of her yearns for that affection.

Regardless, she has to head to the Matthews’ for breakfast and the lump in her throat won’t recede. Katy isn’t around to help — not that she’s equipped with the particular skillset that is necessary to get her down from a pre-Matthews morning freak-out. But still, she wishes for _someone_.

She considers calling Farkle, but their phone conversation yesterday was more than enough. He couldn’t always be at her beckon call, even if he was the only person she felt like talking to.

She swipes a donut from the Entenmann’s container on the kitchen counter and stuffs the subway tokens she needs for the day in her front pocket before heading out, her hands shaky as she turns her keys to the apartment through their respective locks.

A neighbor who’s high out of her mind is leering, as per usual; she pays her no mind and continues trudging down the stairs and out of the building entirely.

The tent city folks say nothing as she passes by. She offers the donut to the closest person to her — a girl who seems to be about her age and who accepts it happily.

She’s seen her at a few parties.

They exchange smiles.

Then, she goes on her way.

 

▼

 

By the time she arrives on Riley’s block, she’s confronted with the sight of her best friend in a blustery rush out of her building.

She’s so frazzled that she crashes right into Maya, who collapses on the concrete and winces at the force of her fall.

“Crap —” Riley manages before she extends a hand; she has no reaction to the sight of Maya other than sheer embarrassment, in true Riley fashion. Maya grabs a hold of her and raises herself up, tapping off any dirt she could have gotten on the back of her jeans with her free hand.

It’s only when Riley is assured that Maya is okay that her expression changes to one of stone; Maya is frightened by her seemingly complete indifference because of how foreign it is to her.

“I told my parents I was skipping breakfast,” Riley reveals, her eyes moving down to her nails once she decides that picking at her cuticles is more worthwhile than holding Maya’s gaze. “I didn’t think you would show up.”

She isn’t sure why Riley would assume that. Truth be told, there are a few options. Did she think Maya was too ashamed to show her face? Did she assume that her best friend was determined to keep disappointing her? Maya can’t tell, and really, she doesn’t want to know the answer.

“Of course I was going to come,” Maya argues. “I always do.”

Riley makes a small sound that Maya identifies as some sort of _tut_ , but says nothing.

“What?” Maya inquires. “Just tell me. Let it all out. I can take it, I promise —”

“If you’re there, I’m there.”

Riley abruptly interrupts her and says this without any context. Maya is befuddled, but only knits her brows together and doesn’t verbally express her confusion.

“ _If you’re there, I’m there._ ”

Well, now she’s just repeating herself. Maya has no choice but to ask.

“What?”

Riley’s jaw tightens. It’s a telltale sign that she’s ready to start crying — something Maya can’t handle right now.

“That’s what you said to me when we talked about the dance. You said you would be there.”

Maya chanced it when she drove the lie home with that affirmation in the first place, and now, she knows that Riley was driven to recount everything thanks to the fact that —

 

“Neither of you were.”

 

Lucas wasn’t there. Riley speaks before his name fully forces itself into Maya’s thoughts. She’d promised herself that he wouldn’t be on her mind when Riley was in front of her and demanding her attention.

She can’t even follow her own simple rules — like a stupid girl who never learns.

“Was it some sort of _thing_? Having your mother — who’s a _terrible_ liar, by the way — lie to my face? Did the two of you just decide that —”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Maya interposes, her hands curling into fists as she contends with the certainty that Riley is spiraling in a way that only she knows how. She is thinking in worst-case scenarios and nothing else, living in some world where Maya and Lucas have conspired against her out of hatred and cruelty.

It couldn’t have ever happened that way, even with all that Riley doesn’t know. Even so, Maya wants to ram her closed fists into her chest and knock the poison that leads to all of her terrible decisions right out of her.

“I would never do that to you and you know it.”

Riley has now rammed her front teeth into her bottom lip, aggressively gnawing at the skin until it begins to tear and flake. She is trying to convince herself that she is unsure, though logic would tell her otherwise. The attempt hurts Maya enough, regardless if it works.

“Riley,” she pleads. “Don’t do that.”

The crescents of skin directly under Riley’s eyes are just the slightest bit red. Maya registers that she’s probably been crying all weekend.

This is an inconsequential thing in Maya’s eyes — a scenario in which her best friend and crush are no-shows at some dance that won’t matter in a few weeks. But it matters deeply to Riley, who has things like this atop her list of concerns.

It matters to Riley, who has never taken even the slightest of betrayals well.

This is it. This is a great moment to recede from her, Maya discerns. This little squabble can become a big one if she doesn’t make up for it properly. Their friendship can be squandered, right here and right now.

Riley will hurt, but she’ll stop hurting one day — and then, finally, Maya will never again be a reason that she hurts. Maybe she’ll never hurt at all ever again.

But Maya is still a girl who loves her best friend, even if she doesn’t treat her as she should. Maya would hurt for the rest of her life. That epiphany runs straight over her like a huffing train. She speaks again.

“I don’t know how to explain myself out of this.”

For once, she tries to provide a slice of truth.

While on the phone with her, she swore she had an explanation up her sleeve. Now, there’s just no point in lying; Riley is disappointed regardless, and adding another fib to the list would be more fatiguing than it is relieving.

 

“I just can’t do it sometimes.”

 

Riley softens, if only just a bit. “Do what?”

Maya takes a few seconds to breathe. She considers how honest she should be right then and there — how much of the piece of herself she’s splintered off and hidden for Riley’s sake she should reveal.

“Be like you.” She says this definitively; so much so that Riley has completely melted the little ice she’d formed around herself. “Go to these dances and spend time with nice guys and _fit_ with everyone else.”

The second part of that comes out in a whirlwind that she can’t control, the speed of her words impressive and terrifying. It takes a while for Riley to swallow all of it; Maya is breathing heavily as she just watches her face transform from confusion to worry to wary acceptance.

“Okay,” she says, and that’s that. She is not reassuring. She doesn’t ask any other questions. She just holds Maya’s gaze for a while, as if a mystery remains that she can reveal with just a look.

“Okay,” Maya says back.

 

( The biggest argument Riley and Maya ever had was when they were eleven. They didn’t speak for a week.

Maya had swiped a few dollars from a teacher’s desk without hesitation. Riley had a word in edgewise, as she expected; she said Maya was _better than that_.

Maya’s mother was between jobs then — not that the Matthews family ever would have known. She’d wanted to help.

She didn’t like being judged.

Eventually, she crawled through Riley’s window and admitted she was wrong. It seemed like the only solution to the problem, because Riley was upright and dignified and Maya was the kind of girl who was supposed to cave.

She didn’t mind it much.

She just stopped stealing when Riley was around.

And then, once her mother got a new job, she stopped stealing altogether — because Maya was also the kind of girl who somehow knew, even then, that she was in desperate need of a good influence. )

 

They aren’t fixed. But there’s a shaky peace as they walk to school side by side in silence.

 

▼

 

It’s Maya who gets through the school doors first, and by then, she’s decided to give Riley some space. It’s best that they let the tension settle, rather than continue to poke at it — especially in Maya’s case. The more Riley nitpicks, the more flaws she will see in the web Maya is weaving.

“We’ll talk more later,” she promises, whipping her head around to face Riley. She has half the mind to reach out her hand, but that would probably be demanding too much.

“Yeah, that’s probably a good idea,” Riley responds, and it sounds as if she’s in some faraway place. Maya is afraid she’s going over the night of the dance in a loop, finding more problems that they might not be able to solve.

But she removes herself all the same, because sticking around will make it worse too. There’s no winning.

She goes around the nearest turn in the hallway before realizing she has nowhere to go, and then —

 

There Lucas is, closing the door to his locker. Maya halts at the sight of him, all of the air exiting her lungs.

 

His face — it’s tinged with light bruises that are a nasty yellow-green color, as if they’ve had a couple days to heal.

She isn’t sure what surprises her more: the sight of him, or the recognition that they are starting to hide themselves from one another — that he can initiate secret conversations with her and still find a way to separate himself into pieces.

 

( She did the best she could do the first time Lucas showed up to a party with bruises. After stuffing his injured knuckles into a plastic cup filled with ice, she insisted that they just sit and talk for a while.

It was strange to hear herself command that they have a discussion; she never pushed anyone into sharing more than they were willing, but they were under higher stakes and pressures now, and she wouldn’t take no for an answer.

“I battled some plaster,” he admitted, wincing as he maneuvered his hand around the makeshift ice pack. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Maya rolled her eyes, convinced that he was being daft. “You can’t be serious. Do you just have nothing better to do?”

She saw his teeth grit together and knew she’d hit a sore spot.

“It’s not like I can hit him,” he says quietly, betraying the hardness in his expression.

She took his free, uninjured hand in both of hers and squeezed it for dear life, the best apology she could manage for being so coarse.

A smile crossed his face — only a tiny one, so incremental that she hardly even noticed it. “Trying to bust that hand up too?”

She laughed — and then, feeling sorry for that too, she clamped her mouth shut.

“You don’t have to do that.”

“What?”

“Get all somber.” His eyes studied her as if she were the only thing worth looking at. “I’m not broken.”

He was broken enough. If he hadn’t been, Maya wouldn’t have hurt for him. But she mumbled an _alright_ , smiled, and endeavored to apologize for thinking he was like her — someone who would punch walls just for the hell of it — for the rest of her life. )

 

His eyes are darting around, examining the scene. He’s avoiding someone, but Maya can’t tell if it’s her or Riley — or both. Regardless, he doesn’t see her.

With that, he swings his backpack onto his shoulder and leaves the hallway altogether.

Maya has a choice here. She just doesn’t know which is more right than the other.

 

Despite every sensible part of her mind — the ones that Riley has helped build over the years — telling her that it’s best to leave it alone, one fact blares louder than everything else: he’s hurt. And she can’t ignore that.

 

She starts looking for him.

 

▼

 

“Your dad is out of control,” Maya lets out once she’s assured that the locker room is empty aside from the two of them.

Lucas sighs, sits on a bench, and puts his head in his hands. “Maya, don’t do this.”

She’s incredulous, her arms crossing the moment he begins to argue. “What? Did you think that I was going to let everything stay a mystery?”

Her determination to forget him completely has been momentarily set aside now that this _thing_ he’s only shared with her has been dug up.

 

She has to make him talk. Things have gotten dire now.

She had to follow him.

_She had to._

It’s what she repeats to herself to justify this.

 

“Look, it was either me or my mother and you know what I’m going to choose.”

Now that he’s in better focus, she notices that he must have had a black eye. All of it is uglier up close.

“Of course I do,” she tries, her voice laced with understanding — she hopes, anyway. “But that doesn’t mean that your dad isn’t out of his fucking mind. And it doesn’t mean that you can show up to school like this and somehow keep me from saying something about it.”

Lucas is silent.

“You call me on the phone, you want to have private conversations when you feel like it — what the hell do you expect from me?”

Acknowledging everything they hide reveals her investment in him even after pushing him away, which is exactly what she should have avoided. But he’s coiled together in knots, and she has to argue her way to their untying. Their secrets are the only weapons she has.

His head raises itself from his hands before he gets up from the bench altogether and begins to close the space between them.

“I don’t know,” he admits. “What the hell are we doing?”

Her breath catches in her throat as he pulls closer. “We’ve already talked about this.”

 

“No, _you_ talked _at me_ about this.”

 

Looking back on it, of course that’s true. She didn’t give him a choice. She couldn’t have.

Being alone with him is a mistake. She knew that before she followed him, no matter how much she tried to deny it. But she followed anyway.

He won’t let up; he’s gentle about it, stepping forward in small steps, but he’s moving towards her all the same.

Just a few inches separate them when she holds up her hand to stop him. Still, he persists, getting so uncomfortably close that —

“You got mugged.”

— she’s forced to blurt those words out.

His expression goes through several incremental transformations over the course of a few pained breaths escaping her lungs; there’s bewilderment, recognition, and then just despondency.

She wants to go back to listening to Lou Reed instead of living the sadness he croons about.

But she can’t, so she marches on.

“You got mugged on the night of the dance and that’s why you didn’t show up. She’ll obviously understand.”

It’s like he doesn’t even know what to do about her anymore; he is so openly defeated that she’s compelled to look away from him and down at the dusty floor.

“If you tell her the truth, she’ll tell her dad and he’ll call child services. And that’s not what you want, so just go with what I’m telling you.”

She barely gets to finish before he lifts her chin up and forces her to look at him.

His eyes are a remarkable kind of green, but she doesn’t give into clichés; she doesn’t believe she can get lost in them. And she doesn’t. But right then, she wishes she could.

“Is this what you really want?”

 

 _This_.

The changes in the winds that she’s initiated — this new relationship of theirs that’s awkward and scattered and leaves an aching in her chest.

_This._

“Yeah.” She moves his hand away and backs up, searching for air she doesn’t have to share with him. He drops his arm entirely, leaving it limp at his side. He doesn’t try to move near her again.

She crosses her arms over her stomach. It’s an idle action that she’s been prone to as of late, so she doesn’t fight it. If anything, it feels as if she’s added a layer of armor.

( And he won’t see anything in it. )

“You asked if we could be friends,” Maya adds, hopelessly searching for a way to close this chapter. “ _You_ did that.”

Lucas sighs loudly out of exasperation. “How do you not get this?”

Her chest pangs again. “Get what?”

 

“I would rather be friends with you than not be _anything_ at all.”

 

This is the perfect time for him to step forward again. But he still doesn’t. He’s either respecting her wishes or he’s given up on trying to convince her to fight for something more than friendship.

 

_I had to follow him. I had to._

 

“And you have me as a friend. I’m right here.”

 

“Okay.”

It’s the second time she’s heard that this morning, and somehow, it’s even more deflating than Riley’s. He has nothing left to say and she has nothing left to offer.

“Okay.”

She doesn’t want to end this on the same note as she ended things with Riley; it’s too eerie.

Instead, she twists the knife that she’s already stuck in him. “It’s not like we were dating.”

They weren’t. They never even saw each other in the light of day.

But it felt like _something_. It did.

She’d wanted to be his girlfriend.

But he couldn’t be her boyfriend. He didn’t qualify. She knew this even when they first met; he didn’t fit the criteria of losers and pitiful personalities, boys who would rip her apart if it meant they could keep themselves whole.

He couldn’t be that then. He definitely couldn’t be it now.

 

( “Does he hit you?” Maya asked this later, after all the ice had melted and they’d moved onto other topics of conversation.

Lucas shook his head.

She let out a sigh of relief, and then —

“Not yet.” )

 

She begins to make her exit rather than linger to watch his face sink any further. Once she’s turned, she speaks again.

“We’re friends. That means that the next time he puts his hands on you, I’m doing something about it.”

She leaves.


	10. ten

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, it's been exactly a year since this was updated — how wild! I'm sorry for taking so long, but the block came fast and fierce. I'm mostly just posting this to see if anyone still cares. If y'all do, I'll continue updating as often as I can. So, y'know — kudos, comments. Bring it.
> 
> And hmu @mxyaharts on Tumblr!

School is more of the same for the rest of the week.

She and Riley awkwardly skate around one another at breakfast, in class, after school. Riley’s parents are openly displeased but say nothing.

Farkle keeps a close eye on her at all times, to his detriment. Unbeknownst to him, Maya takes his new girlfriend aside and reassures her that _no, there’s no way in hell there’s anything between the two of us. He’s just…Farkle._

Lucas’ bruises fade into near nothingness. Riley asks him if the police have found his mugger everyday during lunch like clockwork. He shakes his head and provides no details.

Her mother is sparse as ever; Maya assumes that she has a new boyfriend who she doesn’t want to bring around. Of course, that’s Katy’s business, but for once, Maya wishes she were around.

January ends and gives into February.

The blizzard arrives.

 

▼

 

“Your mother called,” Riley says in homeroom after a private discussion with her father. Mr. Matthews even holds the rest of the class from entering the room until the conversation is over, which leaves Maya assuming that something awful happened.

Her expression probably says as much, so Riley offers her a small smile and shake of her head, like any true friend would; she’s comforting even though she feels anything _but_ comforted around Maya. “Everything’s fine. She just said that she’s not going to be able to make it home for a few days, so it’s probably best that you stay with us.”

 _Definitely_ a new boyfriend. Maya hopes he isn’t completely awful — though he is at least slightly so, considering she gets to meet the palatable ones.

“Is that okay with you?” She asks Riley. If a phone call with a simple request — Maya is definitely no stranger to impromptu sleepovers at the Matthews apartment — resulted in a long, drawn out ordeal, then Riley must have had her reservations.

Maya does too. Spending a night with Riley means that things will feel like old times — in teenage speak, last week — and she’d already managed to convince herself that the change between them was what was best. If there were a gap between them, Riley would eventually write her off as more trouble than she was worth.

“It’s fine, Maya,” Riley says before waving her off and instead focusing on the book she’s meant to be reading for English: _Animal Farm_. Knowing Riley, she’s already read it cover to cover and is simply dusting it off for an exam. But Maya leaves her alone anyhow; even if things are still tense between them, the Matthews aren’t going to let her stay home alone.

Mr. Matthews has the radio blaring as he listens to the news. The flurries from that morning are going to build into a full-fledged storm. There’s talk of shutting down the subways. Mayor Giuliani is going to hold a press conference soon.

Out of the corner of her eye, Maya can see Riley get up from her seat and maneuver towards the back of the classroom. She assumes Riley is going to talk to Lucas.

She continues listening to the news and doesn’t make a move. The dull tones of the radio announcers lull her into some sort of stupor.

Somewhere, Riley and Lucas are laughing.

 

▼

 

By biology, snow is pelting the windows. The _thump, thump, thump_ is even distracting to Maya’s teacher, who is hopelessly flipping through the textbook to find where he lost track of his thoughts.

She considered skipping, but heading home with the Matthews means that she’d be heading right into a lecture if Riley’s father found out. Instead, she is digging her ballpoint pen into the pages of her notebook and leaving rough imprints; she’s not doodling, really — just attacking the pages.

Lucas’ presence is more troubling to her now. Without news of an impending storm that actually _doesn’t_ involve her to distract her, she feels him everywhere. He sits in front of her; in one of those unlucky seats the teacher loves pivoting to. Because of that, he’s usually sufficiently distracted.

Today, she can see his eyes on her from time to time.

She keeps digging her pen in, keeps scratching until the loose-leaf in her notebook is completely ruined.

 

▼

 

“I don’t think we’re gonna make it through the school day,” Farkle says at lunch, admirably always the first to speak and maneuver through the strange silence.

His girlfriend is unimpressed, but that’s nothing new — she has no idea how to wade through the odd guidelines that their friendship group rests on. “Astute observation, sweetie.”

Riley isn’t even paying attention; she and Lucas are messing with a paper fortune teller she probably made herself. It’s the kind of game everyone else probably stopped playing in sixth grade — but not Riley, who still sees the enchantment in a future a piece of paper tells her she will have.

“I’m going to the art studio,” she says before looping her legs out from under the lunch table and heading off before she can hear a single protest from Farkle. She even leaves her lunch tray behind for someone else to throw out.

And she does intend to head to the studio, though she can’t think of anything worth drawing.

 

▼

 

When the bell rings, she’s still staring at a blank canvas.

 

▼

 

In the middle of her next class — which, of course, with Maya’s luck, is history — the intercom blares with the principal’s inevitable announcement.

The rest of the day’s classes are canceled. The students around Maya cheer and then freeze all at once, because the joyful news is delivered with one caveat: the subway system is shutting down in an hour, which means that anyone who has somewhere to travel and doesn’t haul ass will be effectively stranded.

She hears the bum rush of students out of the door, but she doesn’t watch; she’s still idly grounding her pen into the loose-leaf papers in her binder and hasn’t even noticed that the ink has shorted out.

“Maya,” Farkle calls out.

She looks up. There they are, the four of them — Farkle still in his seat beside her, and Riley tugging on Lucas’ arm, keeping him from leaving.

The inevitable conclusion is screaming in her head now: they’re all heading to the same place.

 

▼

 

“I’m not sure why you’re coming along other than keeping me from playing third wheel,” Maya struggles to say in Farkle’s direction, the gusts of snow the blizzard is walloping in her direction getting caught in her throat. She coughs uncomfortably.

Somewhere far ahead of them are Riley and Lucas, who are awkwardly close to a leering Mr. Matthews. Still, they stick side by side, matching one another’s stride — as much as she can tell, anyway, with all the distortion the snow is creating. She sticks her gloved hands further into her pockets and surges forward, stiffening herself against nature.

“Where’s Smackle?”

She turns to Farkle, who shrugs as his immediate response. “In her words, she’s ‘exhausted by the group’s friendship dynamic’.” He pauses. “And she wasn’t at her locker for me to ask.”

Maya understands both pieces to this: the exhaustion and the running. She constantly feels exhausted and wants to run all at once these days.

“And, well, there’s actually something I wanted to talk to you about.” He coughs, but not in the way Maya just did — more in a needing something to do to cut the tension that will follow way.

Her eyes dart ahead of her to make sure that Riley, Lucas, and Mr. Matthews are still far enough ahead, and then back to Farkle. “Make it quick.”

He complies and gets straight to the point. “You haven’t been getting sick lately.”

She raises an eyebrow. “You’re interested in discussing my puking habits?”

He balks. “Not exactly.”

Her exasperation must be evident then, because he seems to shrink into himself. Regardless, she responds. “It just stopped — I don’t know.”

Farkle’s expression is indecipherable for a few moments as he fishes for a way to reply to her that isn’t going to be met with complete aggression. For once, she can see the gears turn in his head as he mulls it over.

“Maya,” he says again, just like he did in history class.

“What?”

He exhales a long, dragged out breath. “We should talk sometime tonight. If you’re not gonna tell Riley or anyone else —”

“Talk about _what_?” At this point, she wants to tear at her own skin to get to the marrow of this.

“It stops, you know,” he says quietly as his eyes even look forward to survey the people in front of them. “As time goes on, it stops.”

Her realization is a slow process. At first, she becomes only more irritated, then contemplative, and then — it hits her like a ton of bricks.

“You have to start thinking about your options. You’re not going to have all of them for much longer.”

Maya suddenly wants to focus on how hard the snow is slapping her in the face. She’s actually thankful that Riley lives too close for them to ride the subway. She can concentrate on the instant pain the weather is doling out rather than the simmering one in her bones that only comes from a weight that won’t lift.

She’s been sad — perhaps even despondent — these past few weeks. She knows this. But she also knows that this is most definitely the worst day she’s had in recent memory.

And it’s not anywhere near done.

 

▼

 

The sun is already setting by the time they arrive at the Matthews apartment and shake off the snow from their coats and boots — _perfect timing_ , Maya bitterly thinks to herself, as her mood and energy deplete even further.

Riley’s mother is already preparing dinner, or so she can smell, but more importantly, she’s having a conversation with a figure whose back is turned.

She vaguely recognizes him — she knows he’s a man, at least, from his form — but it isn’t until he turns around that the world shifts once more.

 

( Shawn Hunter.

He was a regular presence in her life for quite some time.

Sure, he dated her mom for a short while, but it always felt like a courtesy — a way to stay in with his best friends as they grew into bigger and better people and he stayed the same.

Maya didn’t blame him when it didn’t work out; her mother didn’t seem too thrilled about the arrangement anyway. More importantly, he buzzed around her because he was attached to the Matthews’ sides.

Until he wasn’t.

He was a clear, distinct product of the times, in every good and bad way imaginable. Riley’s parents seemed resigned to the fact that he was going to end up a mess. So they didn’t fight it when he became an addict. They just asked him to stop coming around until he figured his shit out.

At the time, Riley knew nothing of it. They were too young for the adults to consider it appropriate to share that sort of thing. So, Maya being the mischievous little girl she was, she eavesdropped on what seemed to be the last conversation shared between the three of them.

“When I’m ready to get out of this hole, I’ll get myself out of it,” Shawn promised, though he clearly was in quite the daze. “And I won’t go back. I know I won’t.”

It must have taken a while, because she hadn’t heard anything of him since. Sometimes, she resented the Matthews. She believed that she missed Shawn more than they did. With hindsight and age, she concluded that her assumption obviously wasn’t the case — not with the years of friendship between all of them — but still, she silently wondered how he was doing out on his own without any phone calls or letters from the two people who had loved him through thick and thin for most of his life.

It must have been lonely. She ached for him. She knew of loneliness, even if she only manufactured hers.

And she identified with him — this boy who grew into a fucked up man, no matter how many times the good influences in his life tried to steer him straight. He said it was all inevitable.

She knew how strong that certainty felt too. )

 

“You came out on the other side,” she breathes out the moment he turns around.

Shawn laughs bashfully and pretends to scratch his head. He’s wearing a long-sleeved sweater, and Maya understands that he’s probably sparing them from the sight of his scars and choosing to brave the apartment’s stifling heat. She’s already sweating for him.

“I did, yeah.” And that’s all he says.

“I’m sure he doesn’t want to talk about that, Maya,” Riley pipes up, and she sounds like her parents in the process. Maya doesn’t take well to being scolded by her best friend, but it’s best not to challenge her right now — she’s already in deep shit, and making a scene in front of the Matthews and Shawn isn’t the route she needs to go.

Over the years, Riley’s parents dropped hints as to Shawn’s whereabouts, and she eventually came to her own conclusions about the entire thing. They were the correct ones, of course, because she wasn’t an idiot, but Maya always felt a bizarre sort of pride in knowing that she understood what was going on all along.

There were few things Maya understood before Riley.

“We’ll talk later, Maya,” Shawn says, and it actually sounds like a promise.

Riley’s mother doesn’t look thrilled at the prospect — after all, Shawn may be spilling all of the nitty-gritty details of his addiction to a teenager — but still, she smiles and saves Shawn the trouble. “You’ll have plenty of time. Shawn is staying with us for a little while. He wants to acclimate himself to the city again.”

Riley is buzzing at the news, jumping up and down to make it known how excited she is. Maya considers it a bad sign that she’s irritated by it.

Shawn sees a new face among the group and steps forward to meet Lucas. The younger boy extends his hand for a shake.

“I don’t know if you’ve heard anything about me, but —” Shawn stops; he must have noticed the slight yellow tinge that Lucas’ extremely faint bruises still have. “You roughhousing with this one, Maya?”

Maya gulps. She really, truly wants to die of embarrassment.

“Not even a little bit,” she mumbles, pretending to shake some imaginary snow loose from her jeans.

 

▼

 

Dinner has more silence than conversation. Their dishes clank and fill it just fine.

Maya’s eyes are straight on the mashed potatoes when Lucas and Riley accidentally reach for them at the exact same time.

Riley blushes, she imagines. But she doesn’t try to see for herself.

 

▼

 

It’s Wednesday, she registers once they huddle in front of the living room television some time later. The adults have left to the other side of the apartment to have their small talk, leaving the four of them to their devices.

It’s Wednesday, and Maya knows what that means: Beverly Hills, 90210.

It’s a vapid and idiotic show, but Maya and Riley devour it as if it’s the best thing that’s ever been written. Though Maya’s trips to the Matthews apartment remain less frequent, she always, always makes sure to show up on Wednesday nights. First off, Riley would be immediately suspicious if she didn’t, and secondly, Maya wouldn’t miss a chance to indulge in overwrought rich people problems.

They sit on the sofa in a peculiar order that she hates. Riley is on the right end, leaving her smack dab in the middle of Farkle and Lucas. She can feel the heat rising from them both.

She imagines Farkle is chomping at the bit to finally have the conversation he hinted at earlier. And Lucas — well, he’s Lucas. He’s feeling frenetic about something, she can tell. His hand closest to her is firmly planted on the couch, but it fidgets every now and then, forcing her hand to awkwardly brush against his.

She doesn’t lift her head away from the screen to check if he’s doing the same thing with Riley. That would just be asking for trouble.

Riley is always silent during these episodes — she even shushes Maya when she tries to complain about how painfully stupid some of the characters are — but now she is especially engrossed, gasping at key points.

A character Maya has never particularly liked is considering having an abortion. She’s just gotten out of a long-term relationship, but with the help of television magic, is already in deep shit with a bartender she barely knows.

 _Of course_.

Maya can see Farkle’s eyes poring into her in her periphery every now and then, but her own eyes are trained on the screen. She’s not looking at him. She won’t.

Lucas’ hand intertwines with hers for what she thinks is the briefest moment of her entire goddamn life, but even so, she feels like she hasn’t breathed in a year when he hurriedly pulls away having realized his mistake. She exhales.

He tried to hold hands with the wrong girl.

That is how Maya finds out: on the other side of the couch, Lucas and Riley are holding hands.

 

▼

 

( “I don’t really like holding hands,” she said to him once.

They were, of course, holding hands — or, rather, playing with one another’s hands, wrestling it out to see whose opinion on the matter would win.

“It’s so middle school, c’mon,” she prodded, though she was giggling as her hand struggled to relinquish itself from his grasp.

“You know that’s not true,” he countered with a grin, but somehow his face softened quickly and he seemed to become contemplative.

“What?” Maya realized she must have looked like she’d just woken up from a nightmare. Her heart was pounding in hard, unrelenting beats. This wasn’t like holding hands with Riley — who, once upon a time, she wondered if she loved as more than a friend because she constantly sought her tactile comfort.

“Nothing,” Lucas replied, only smiling as he now easily slid his fingers in between hers.

No. This — this was different.

This she felt everywhere. )

 

▼

 

The town car Mr. Minkus has sent for Farkle and Lucas blessedly arrives soon after.

The four of them are in various states of concentration on their homework when the call arrives — meaning, of course, three of them are dutifully scribbling in their notebooks while Maya is staring out of Riley’s window, watching the flurries the storm has left in its wake.

She still feels Farkle’s eyes on her, so when he holds out his hand to lift her away from the bay window, she isn’t surprised.

“Maya and I have to talk logistics on our…” Farkle is desperately trying to search for a class they have together without anyone else, she can tell. “Gym…project?”

He pulls her out of the room before anyone can process the idiocy of his fib, and while she thinks it’ll stop there, he drags her out of the apartment entirely to provide them complete seclusion.

“That wasn’t weird at all, dweeb,” she comments with a roll of her eyes, though her teeth are pressing into her tongue as a side effect of her current bout of anxiety.

“I’m not quick on my feet, alright?” Farkle raises his hands as a form of surrender. “It got us out of the room.”

Maya sighs, one of her hands rising to plow through her hair and set it off to the side. She doesn’t like this feeling — being overwhelmingly nervous around someone she’s known for nearly all of her life. “You can’t expect me to talk about this right now.”

He exhales, shoving his hands into his pockets; Maya is getting the impression that he feels just as fidgety as she does. “I don’t. But we will — soon. We can skip lunch in the cafeteria tomorrow; maybe hang out in the art studio. Or wherever you want.”

“Okay.”

“Alright.”

Finally, some sort of variation to the conversation ender Maya is tired of experiencing.

Still, he must notice that something strikes her about it, because he steps forward to hug her. It’s for the affection and for the closeness, she knows, as he presses a hand into her hair and leaves the other parked on her back.

It’s for reminding her of his presence.

When he begins to separate from her, he makes it a point to press a gentle kiss to her forehead.

And it’s then, like clockwork in this awful day of abject awfulness, that Lucas finally emerges from the Matthews apartment.

She’s completely frozen at the sight of him, leaving Farkle alone in his quest to make things look innocent and not at all fraught with drama. After the first few seconds of horror, she has enough brainpower to pity him.

“Tomorrow, then,” Farkle adds, and then he’s heading down the hallway before Maya can conjure up a joke about telling on him to his girlfriend to alleviate the obvious awkwardness.

Lucas has been looking at her this entire time, and in a way that he has seemed to consciously avoid in public situations from the moment Maya steered him toward Riley. It’s like he can’t help himself this time.

She doesn’t think Farkle noticed, but regardless, it’s not like she can call him out on it. That would only make this entire scenario even messier.

He’s apparently at a loss of words until —

“Sorry.”

He doesn’t elaborate, and he must know he doesn’t have to. It’s not like he has much to apologize for where she’s concerned.

“Don’t mention it,” she responds, and thanks to her tone it literally translates into _no, actually, please never mention it again_ , which is exactly what she intended.

Lucas nods, his eyes moving to the floor. She wonders if he seems more solemn than usual because he interpreted her interaction with Farkle exactly as what it wasn’t.

But she doesn’t wonder for very long.

“If there’s something wrong, you know you can still tell me, right?”

Maybe he’s asking because of what just happened with Farkle. Maybe it’s because she isn’t great at hiding how sad and lost and all of the other unpleasant things she feels.

It doesn’t matter in the long run. Regardless, he’s still asking.

“Sure,” she says, but they both know she doesn’t mean it. After all, he didn’t mean it when he supposedly accepted her offer to be a listening ear whenever he asked.

She wants to mean it, but she can’t.

He shuffles on his feet for a few more seconds before turning away from her and following Farkle — who, in hindsight, Maya hopes was nowhere within earshot.

 

▼

 

Riley’s room has been dark for hours, it seems, before either of them pipes up.

They haven’t spoken much at all today, but here they are, huddled in this room together. Maya registers that it’s still snowing outside; there’s no way school will be in session tomorrow.

So there they will be tomorrow, and the day after, and the day after that — because this snow won’t stop, and it’s avalanching over everything in Maya’s life.

 

( She won’t have to talk to Farkle, she belatedly realizes. )

 

Her back is against the bay window, which is what she’s claimed for the night. Usually, she and Riley would just sleep on her mattress together, but she got the impression that wasn’t exactly what Riley wanted. She would have considered the couch despite the obvious suspicions that her parents would have about their rift widening, but Shawn has claimed it for the foreseeable future.

Maya is hashing over all of the dominoes that have crashed over the course of the day when Riley breaks through the silence.

 

“This is what growing pains feel like, right?”

 

She sits up on her mattress. All this time, Maya thought she was sleeping.

“Tell me that’s what happening so it can make sense, Maya. I’ve been going over it in my head and it’s the only answer I’ve got, so — please.”

This is Riley, who will give Maya every excuse in the book to throw back at her so she won’t have to be angry. This is Riley, who won’t let go even if Maya objectively isn’t worth it.

“I can’t explain this away.” She could if she tried hard enough, but something in Maya won’t make this reconciliation easy. Something in Maya refuses the easy way out even when it is offered to her, over and over again.

“You can. You’re just not trying.” Riley is shaking her head now, dumbfounded by everything that’s going on right now.

“Maybe this is what happens. Maybe this is what growing pains are. Maybe people just realize that they’re too different —”

“We’ve always been different!” Riley shatters the bullshit at a speed that impresses Maya; she’d usually let it go on for much longer, indulge her best friend’s ridiculousness, but the stakes must be too high this time. “You, me, Farkle — we’re three _different_ people. That’s how we work. That’s the only reason _why_ we work.”

Her thumbs are wrestling each other, one looping over another in an endless pattern. She’s digging through the dirt to wrestle Maya from this grave and Maya can tell that she’s being pulled down into it.

 

( Beneath it all — the giddiness and the optimism that came in bounds — Riley was sad. And it wasn’t the kind of sad that went away with time; it was a sadness that was bred out of self-deprecation and unease, of hurt feelings whenever people took her joy and made something awful out of it.

Riley was sad, and that was just something the three of them all dealt with.

Riley was sad, but it was Maya who most identified with that sadness. So she always saw it when it crept out. Always. )

 

“You’re what I’ve got.”

And Farkle and Riley are what Maya have. For once, they’re one in the same.

They hadn’t ever been particularly popular; Maya had the most acquaintances of them all, but those relationships mainly depended on what either side could do for the other: what drinks they could buy, what hole in the wall they could find.

The only constants in Maya’s life were one boy and one girl who had composed her entire world.

Somehow, in the midst of her selfishness, she’d forgotten that Riley didn’t know how to construct a life on the other side of this if Maya was no longer in the picture.

But the longer this went on, the harder it would be for Riley to understand that she was better off without someone who had been by her side for all this time. It was time to start the heartbreak.

For both of their sakes.

“I think we might just…” Maya breathes out and prepares herself for what’s coming, because not even she wants to hear it. “Need a break. I think there are things I need to figure out —”

_Without you. Apart from you._

Her problems weren’t Riley’s problems. That was the whole point of this.

“Good for you, then,” Riley says after some time, and it’s the coldest Maya’s ever heard her sound. With that, she settles back down onto her mattress and turns away from Maya entirely, moving onto her side.

 

Maya feels numb to her core. For once during this entire ordeal, she’s compelled to apologize for everything and fix things for her own sake. But she can’t.

So she goes back to looking out of the window.

 

( “I know Texas boys aren’t really used to snow, but us city folk are usually fans of winter,” Maya mocked in her terrible southern drawl, shaking her damp hair free of any flurries.

It was sleeting, more specifically — so much so that she was almost sure her dark red lipstick had smeared everywhere.

But Lucas didn’t seem to care. It might have been the cheap champagne they’d had in some apartment before hitting the streets, but they were both so giddy and giggling that Maya instantly thought of Riley when she saw Lucas beaming.

“I’m a quick study,” he murmured, leaning downward to kiss her once, twice, three times — holding on for dear life the last time around. )


End file.
